When you think of B2B sales, most business owners will think of the old ways to sell. That meant getting on the phone and making cold calls until your head hurt. Luckily, things have changed and closing B2B sales is now much easier with modern marketing strategies.
Content marketing is not a new trick in the book. It has been around for a while now and B2B marketers have recognized its full power. In fact, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their marketing and sales strategy. What’s more, the most effective marketers spend 39% of their entire marketing budgets on content.
Perhaps most importantly, 51% of B2B buyers will use content to inform themselves before making a decision to buy. With this in mind, it’s high time to pay attention to content as a factor in increasing your B2B sales.
Catch your prospects at the top of the funnel
At the very beginning of the buyer’s journey, your B2B sales prospects want to get educated. They have a problem and they’re looking for a way to solve it, and you can give a helping hand. They will not go straight to your product or landing pages – you need to provide real value first before closing the deal.
Source: Artstorefronts
The ideal type of content for the top of the funnel are whitepapers. One of the most common B2B sales materials, whitepapers should be at the core of your content marketing strategy. Lay out a problem and show actionable ways to solve it.
For example, if you sold a piece of software that helps with applicant tracking and recruitment, your ideal whitepaper should explain the difficulties of tracking applicants, why this is a problem for modern HR managers and finally, you should provide actionable ways to solve this problem.
When writing a whitepaper, the best practice is to stick to your specific field of expertise. Even if you’re not directly pitching your products and services, you need to present yourself as an expert. One of the key goals of content in this stage of the sales funnel is to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and your company as an authority in a specific niche.
If you’ve ever made B2B sales cold calls, you know that your prospects don’t have time to waste. You have a very short time frame to make an impression, so make it count. B2B buyers prefer shorter pieces of content so keep this in mind. Your whitepapers should be easy to read and digest, with main information laid out clearly in larger, bold text.
Don’t get too wordy, as you will lose your buyers’ attention. On the other hand, don’t dumb your content down to a point where the buyers get the information they already know. Your buyers aren’t choosing their next pair of headphones – they’re looking to make an investment in thousands, if not millions of dollars. Be mindful of their time and use your buyer personas wisely.
Don’t neglect the evaluation stage
Once your prospect is hooked on your first piece of content, it’s time to grab them by the hand and take them down the sales funnel. If they download your whitepaper or sign up for your webinar, you will have their email.
If they liked your content enough to submit their email, you’ve got your foot through the door, but the prospect is still in the evaluation stage. There are most likely several options that they are reviewing and your product is one of them. You can rely on them re-visiting your site and going through more of your blog posts, whitepapers, infographics and so on – but it’s better to take action.
At LeadQuizzes, we’re a huge fan of marketing automation. This is why we suggest targeted or triggered emails as your best choice for the evaluation stage of the sales funnel. These emails are sent automatically in response to certain actions. For example, your buyer will download a whitepaper on the best running shoes for outdoors enthusiasts.
Since they opted in with their email, you can quickly follow up – for example, with a link to your article titled Running Shoes Trends for 2018. Thanks to email marketing automation, you will know once they click and land on this piece of content, and you can use this info to send them content related to the product they’re considering.
Source: Responsewise
Instead of blindly blasting your emails, try sending out purposeful triggered messages like these. Research suggests that targeted emails have higher open and click-through rates compared run-of-the-mill newsletters.
The advantages to this type of email are twofold. First, you will be able to repurpose content you created previously. Second and more importantly, you will remind your prospects about your product and what makes you stand out from the competition. Instead of calling or emailing them each day, they will get a nudge (automatically) that reminds them you’re there, and that your content can help.
Use case studies for the bottom of your B2B sales funnel
If you are deciding whether or not to buy a product, what better way to convince you than actual real-world data? There are multiple benefits to having case studies, and increasing your B2B sales is just one of them.
Why aren’t case studies more prominent as a B2B sales tool? First off, they’re not the easiest piece of content to create. You need extensive user data showing your products and services helped make a difference. In the ideal case that you have methods to pull this data on your own, the second biggest hurdle is getting the data out there.
Namely, if one of your clients has achieved massive success using your product, you need to share precise information on the methods they used. This means that they have to provide sensitive data and information to the public eye, including their marketing and sales tactics. Once you find a client that is willing to disclose this info – most of your work is done.
At LeadQuizzes, we’re a huge fan of case studies. In fact, we have over 30 published case studies on our site. Through them, we tell stories of our clients’ success and how LeadQuizzes helped them raise awareness, generate leads and make more sales.
With each case study on our site, we offer several elements. First, a background story on who the client is and what their needs are. Second, the goal they wanted to achieve using LeadQuizzes. Third, the solution they used to get their goal, with keys to success, i.e. the exact steps they took. Finally, the majority of our case studies include a video testimonial. When it comes to content marketing, testimonials in video form have an astounding rate of 89% effectiveness, so they are a must for an effective case study.
Case studies are a great way to tell a story and increase your B2B sales. Not only do you showcase yourself and your products’ strengths, you also tell a story about who your clients are, which is another method to attracting more buyers.
Develop and document a content marketing strategy
Anybody with a site and a blog can publish a few posts and say that they’re creating content. However, for the most part you would be shooting blanks and not driving new B2B sales your way.
In order to get results you can measure from your content marketing efforts, you need a documented strategy. According to Content Marketing Institute, 48% of small B2B marketers have a documented content strategy, in comparison to 41% of larger organizations.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
How exactly does a content strategy help you grow your B2B sales?
One of the most important aspects of crafting a content strategy is creating audience personas. Similar to buyer personas, these are the people (and businesses) that come to your pages and read your content.
Your mission is to increase B2B sales so you will not be targeting the general public. Just like a buyer persona defines your ideal customer, an audience persona is a general outline of your ideal content consumer.
Think about who your prospects are. Envision the type of challenges they are facing and how you can provide a solution. Think of their company – how big it is, what industry they are in and how many employees they have. Additionally, take their job position into consideration. You will not be creating the same kind of content for CMOs, marketing directors and managers, for example.
With your ideal audience persona in mind, you will achieve two things. First, your content will be more engaging and easier to relate to. Second, you will create content much more easily because you will know exactly who you’re writing for.
The key to getting more B2B sales is to think of the start of your sales funnel – your leads. If you’re struggling to get quality leads and get your sales numbers up, you’re in luck. LeadQuizzes makes lead generation a piece of cake – just ask one of our 7,500 active users, who managed to score over 3 million leads and counting. And the best part – you can try it out today for free!
