Thursday, January 22, 2015

Poor Map of B2B Buyer Journey Leads to Lost Sales

If inbound marketing fails to guide the buyer’s journey with relevant content, traffic and leads fail to become sales. Business-to-business marketing faces a special challenge because a purchase may involve a team of prospects--each with different personal and professional concerns--points out a recent Hubspot blog post by business consultant Ed Marsh. When B-to-B marketers don't have one decision-maker to woo, they must build content for the role and concerns of each prospect "persona" at different points in the buying process. Plus, marketing must choreograph segues between personas to prevent sales from slipping through the cracks, creating a "series of 'yeses' that keeps buyers moving" to the close. Marsh suggests what he calls a "3D corporate buying journey" framework. Start with a good understanding of your prospective buyers' industry--the hand-offs, push-back and analysis to which projects are subjected--and get the details by conducting real interviews with each persona at target companies, he advises. When you do so, make sure to get the objections on the table so your content can address them. Then map the buying process like a GANTT chart, a linear process that is full of interdependency, precedent and constraining factors. Note the hand-offs and create content for a smooth transition. This requires content that helps your prospects sell on your behalf and that overcomes finance, legal, production, HR, IT or other departmental hurdles by resonating with each discipline. For the whole post, see
http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/why-your-existing-buyer-personas-might-not-be-working

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Are Facebook, Twitter Brand Marketing Wastes?

Facebook and Twitter are wastes of time and money for brand relationship marketing, concludes a report by Forrester Research. As a story in Fast Company magazine highlights, a recent Forrester study found that posts from top brands on Twitter and Facebook reach just 2% of their followers. Engagement was even worse; only 0.07% of followers actually interacted with posts. Fast Company cites this conclusion by Nate Elliott, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester: "It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave. Yet most brands still use these sites as the centerpiece of their social efforts—thereby wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources on social networks that don’t deliver value." So what's a better digital bet for relationship marketers? Try e-mail, which gets delivered more than 90% of the time compared with the 2% delivery of Facebook posts, Elliott advises. "If you have to choose between adding a subscriber to your e-mail list or gaining a new Facebook fan, go for e-mail every time," he writes. For the article, see http://www.fastcompany.com/3038801/brands-are-wasting-time-and-money-on-facebook-and-twitter-report-says