By Marie Wiese, President and Founder, Marketing CoPilot
What are you doing about it?
70% Your buyer will be 70% of the way through their buying process before you ever hear from them
XXL Potential customers will use multiple pieces of online data in the decision making process. There is no silver bullet anymore.
99% Of prospects will consult a website before they decide to put something on their list of choices.
100% Will go to your website before making the final decision to buy from you.
How good is your digital dialogue?
We don t hear from customers until after they have made a decision to buy something else We are struggling to add value We have become order takers We are caught in the bottom of the sales funnel
Unless your organization can survive in a commoditized procurement state, you MUST create a digital dialogue with your customers so you can engage them at the top of the sales funnel.
Good content = Sales
Is not intrusive Adds value Invites you to engage
1. Customers are not targets; they are people who are interested in solving their own problem. 2. People don t buy from companies; they buy from people. 3. Marketers worry about their ability to build persuasive copy but persuasion is not authentic. Clarity is persuasion.
When you communicate, there is no action required on the part of the recipient - they passively receive the information Marketing means you are eliciting a response or follow through on a call to action When you start a digital dialogue, you are looking for a physical and measurable response
1. Overcoming product bias 2. Thinking good content is easy to produce 3. Dealing with CEOs that are afraid to share 4. Unwilling to test
Yes. Well planned, customer-centric content can be socialized to drive traffic back to some call-to-action or activity on your website.
Yes. Well planned, customer-centric content can be socialized to drive traffic back to some call-to-action or activity on your website.
Yes. Well planned, customer-centric content can be socialized to drive traffic back to some call-to-action or activity on your website.
Yes. Well planned, customer-centric content can be socialized to drive traffic back to some call-to-action or activity on your website.
If you accept the fact the sales process starts online, you need to be where your customers are consuming content and trusting sources to point them to solutions to their problems. Based on what you sell and who you sell to, their buyer journey is what you need to focus on.
Customer-centric business in blog topics and social media Email campaigns with good headlines Headlines create links in social media Paid media test headlines People engage with content that matters to them They go to see if they can afford something they need They download the brochure
Problems/Triggers the Grantek sales team looks for in a prospective customer Someone wanting to reduce the cost of manufacturing a product Someone wanting to shorten downtime caused by equipment failure or safety issues Someone wanting to improve competitiveness by adding or changing a product line Someone who needs to automate or change processes to improve competitiveness
Experiment ID: Grantek.com Location: Burlington, Ontario Test Protocol: Testing content by audience and topic. Research Notes: Background: North American B2B systems integration company. Objective: Start to create list segmentation. Primary Research Question: Who cares more about safety automation: Senior managers or safety engineers? 30
Gate value-add content
Email open rate, click thru rate Time on page Bounce rate Next page >>> follow call-to-action Download form or subscribe form completed Time on site Engagement within industry
As a result of testing pieces of content through an integrated digital strategy (website, social media, CEO, email marketing, etc), Grantek was able to determine that certain topics matters more engineers than senior managers when they set out to solve a problem. By testing the content with both audiences at the same time, Grantek was able to determine that senior managers didn t care about machine safety and wouldn t look for that when starting the buyer journey. Engineers on the other hand would. Custom content targeted to the right buyer at the right time, significantly sped up the buying process for Grantek and improved their online dialogue with prospects.
Marie Wiese @mariewiese
What has fundamentally changed forever making a digital dialogue for your company a MUST?
Buyer behavior! Buyer wants to self-educate They want to get information from other people and places other than your sales people They want to start the buying process online
How do you support the online buyer journey?
Produce value-added content so your customer can self-educate, offering them the content they want to consume in a way that makes sense for them.
Download the Content Marketing Bootcamp Workbook: http://marketingcopilot.com/resources/contentmarketing-workbook/
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Since 2003, Marketing CoPilot has been providing small and medium-sized businesses with digital marketing strategies that produce measurable business results. Marketing CoPilot integrates deep technical and creative capabilities with a proven methodology to help organizations turn their websites into powerful lead generation and lead nurturing tools. 100% of the companies that implement the Marketing CoPilot Content Marketing Program, have reduced the cost of lead acquisition and improved their sales and marketing results. Marketing CoPilot Inc is a registered trademark in Canada. Copy right @2014. Not to be reproduced or reused without full attribution. Marketing CoPilot Inc. 32 Prince William Drive Markham, ON L3R 7V5 416.218.2009