Unlocking the Complexity of B2B Marketing

A Featured Interview with Jennie Kitchin - Marketing Manager at Greenlight Digital ‍

The New B2B Buyer

More than ever, the journey that B2B buyers are taking is more complex and more personal than ever. 

Many businesses have felt this shift in the last year and a half, seeing that B2B buyers are assessing companies based on the conversations they’re having at every level of business. Now more than ever as a company, you are what you say. 

B2B buyers aren’t just reading your marketing collateral and making decisions-- they’re actively choosing to have conversations with brands to see what those brands are saying. More and more a B2B buyer’s opinion of your entire company is being shaped most by the conversations they are having with the people inside your organisation. 

Do you have a strategy in place to give the new B2B buyer what they expect?

In this article, Jennie Kitchin - Marketing Manager at Greenlight Digital. Jennie shares her secrets and strategies on how you can convert more B2B buyers in the current marketing landscape.
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Generating the Right Traffic

While this may seem like a basic first step, one of the most important facets of your B2B strategy is to get the right traffic to your website. Jennie relies on the tried and true methods of strong, topical content and events that are gated and require the potential customer to give their information. Jennie says:

"I’ve always found that gated content and events tend to be the best channels to generate MQLs – not exactly ground-breaking but these are the traditional channels for a reason! The key is to really focus your content and ensure it’s truly valuable and provides real insight."

She goes on to explain that when you’re deciding to gate your content, it’s very important that you consider what the value exchange is for the audience. Your content must be good enough for them to hand over data or you’re wasting opportunities. Jennie implores marketers to ask themselves if they would hand over their data to gain access to the content-- and if not, you need to step up the quality. 

Jennie also states that the best pieces of content that convert are centred around trends, future predictions, and guides/playbooks.
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How Do You Capture the Data?

Even if you have content that’s powerful enough to compel your site’s visitors to hand over their data, the method you use to collect that data is equally important to your success. 

One of the most popular approaches is to use lead generation forms- however those come with limitations that can hinder your success. Jenni warns about some of the downsides of lead generation forms, stating:

"The main issue with lead gen forms is that it’s very difficult to get all the information you need to properly qualify from one form. If a form requires too much input then people will be put off completing it, too little and it’s impossible to qualify a lead without a lot of manual research work."

While one solution to this is multi step forms, or forms that have menu options to choose from, this can still be an inferior option that costs you leads.

We’ve found that using chat is the strongest solution because it allows you too deeply and dynamically qualify leads and uncover any needs a prospect has in real time. Through conversation, chat can also allow you and the prospect to uncover things that you would have never found as early in the buying process through form fills.

Relying on email is just as challenging since B2B sales needs more customisation than ever. The last thing you want is for a marketing qualified lead to have to go to you contact page and fill out a form, hoping that it will arrive into someone’s inbox that gets checked with some sort of regularity.
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Chat helps you qualify customers at the moment they’re ready to talk about the solutions you can offer.

The Technical Side of Things

It’s more important than ever that you keep a close eye on your website’s data to see what is working and what isn’t. You’ll also very likely be surprised if you run a side-by-side comparison of the last two years-- for many businesses the changes will be evident. 

The best way to know how your website traffic is behaving is to take a look under the hood at your Google Analytics (GA) data. This will give you a clear idea of what portions of your strategy are working, and where you might have some work to do. Jennie says:

“Get familiar with GA! This will allow you to track your website traffic and see where your drop-offs are. Is there a page that gets a lot of hits but doesn’t result in conversions? Have a look at that page and see how it can be improved. It could be as simple as adding a more obvious CTA, a prompt to complete a contact form, or a link to a blog for further reading.”

Google Analytics can be daunting to learn at first glance, and sadly it isn’t the most intuitive software. If this part of the article feels way over your head, The Chat Shop specialises in being able to read your Google Analytics, and help you convert the traffic that comes to the site. In fact, if you reach out, we’ll take a look at your Google Analytics for you at no charge and tell you what we’re seeing.

Looking Ahead For 2022

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There’s no question that there has been a shift in the digital marketing landscape over the last 18 months, and we’ve been experiencing what Jennie refers to as “a real light bulb moment for B2B marketing.” We agree, and have identified some trends that we expect to surface in the coming year. 

You can see all of our predictions in our free B2B marketing report in the next section, but here are the insights that Jennie has seen from her experiences:

• “Many businesses are finally, really understanding the importance of having a strong marketing function in order to grow and also retain. I’ve seen a move away from product focus to looking at the customer, which I think will continue to be prominent for 2022.”
• “It’s easy to forget in B2B that you’re still talking to people! I think CX will be, and should be, a big focus for marketers.”
• “With many businesses...focusing heavily on growth tactics, I think sales enablement will also be a big focus… making it even more important for marketing and sales teams to work collaboratively.”
• ”In terms of the tech stack, I think we’ll see a big rise in the number of businesses using intent data to assist their ABM, helping them to target warmer leads and focus efforts.”

Build Your New B2B Strategy With This Report

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Customers equate the quality of your company with the quality of the conversations they have with you and your employees. Now more than ever, those conversations are happening in real-time through chat software on a company’s website. 

Is this a weak link for you? What conversations are happening on your website?

Are you ready to take a look behind the curtain at the strategies and advice of successful B2B marketers to immediately improve your strategy? 

Let The Chat Shop help you find the answers you’re looking for. Learn more about the new B2B buyer and how to communicate with them the way they expect with this free report. 

Get the report by completing the form below, and start boosting your lead generation today.

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