As the customer preference for sourcing information moves from face to face contact to search engines and digital resources, the time is ripe to re-imagine how you communicate with your manufacturing prospects.
And as we move into an increasingly connected and switched-on digital age, personalisation is becoming one of the more powerful tools at our disposal.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2012 but has since been updated for optimal accuracy and relevance.
Marketing is changing faster than ever. As you likely remember, there was once a time when B2B businesses would make cold calls or pay unsolicited visits to prospects to sell their products and services.
Imagine a world without data.
A world where advertisers and marketers have no details about their prospects and where the first data they can collect is the buyer’s name on a purchase order.
With GDPR, which severely restricts what data the marketer can collect and how they collect it, and the so-called ‘walled gardens’ of Google, Facebook and Amazon, which only allow access to their customers on their terms, we may be headed in that direction right now.
Wouldn’t business be so much easier if you didn’t have to deal with people? Well, today, there’s a whole range of systems, content channels and marketing techniques that allow you to market a business with little or no direct human interaction with the potential customer. Major companies are heavily investing in complex algorithms – often erroneously sold as Artificial Intelligence – that can interact “intelligently” with the prospect and customer.
September has arrived. The kids are back at school, this summer’s heatwave is a distant memory, and it’s starting to feel very autumnal. Dare I say it, but it will be Christmas before we know it. So it’s not too early to start thinking about the new year, right?
With the world changing a mile a minute, it certainly pays to stay ahead of the curve. Here are some thoughts about the digital marketing trends you need to keep an eye out for in 2019.
Video continues to dominate the digital landscape - from its prevalence on company websites, social media and news sites to the popularity of online streaming services.
And according to research from Wyzowl in ‘The State of Video Marketing 2018,’ video has established itself as a highly-rated and successful medium for increasing traffic, engaging with B2B prospects and encouraging action.
Among the report’s key findings was the fact that eighty-one per cent of businesses have used video content as a marketing tool.
Of these, a substantial 97% of respondents said that video had helped them to increase user understanding of their product or service. And 76% confirmed that the use of video had helped them to increase sales.
Kaizen is achieving continuous improvement through the application of small, ongoing positive changes - continually improving your business, your processes and your ways of working - one bit at a time.
No matter what industry you’re in, continuous improvement is vital if you want to stay ahead of the game. No company survives in the long-term by sticking to the status quo.
For those that really get inbound marketing, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that your inbound marketing methodology needs to be a process continual improvement.
Trade shows and exhibitions have long been a mainstay in traditional marketing. The word “exhibition” originates as early as 1649. It is a derivative of the Latin word "expositio", meaning "displaying" or "putting on a show" (Morrow, Sandra L.)
Despite advancements in technology and the internet changing the way customers buy, B2B trade shows remain an important part of the inbound marketing mix. But like all other marketing activities, they are only effective if they are properly planned and executed as a part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.
In reality, your buyers do not need to attend a trade show to learn about your products anymore, they can visit your website, social channels or read online reviews.
Social listening is the act of analysing conversations that take place on social platforms involving a specific brand or industry.
Not to be confused with social media monitoring, social listening allows brands to hone in on their target audience’s most common frustrations, challenges and values, extracting key insights that help design a more appealing content offering.
Perfectly described by Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights, “Monitoring sees trees; listening sees the forest.”
Traffic and leads. The two are intrinsically linked. You can’t generate leads without traffic. And traffic means nothing if you can’t convert visitors to leads.
But just one in five companies are satisfied with their conversions, according to Hubspot.
If your company is invested in inbound marketing, optimising your website to maximise conversions should be a necessity. But with conversion rate optimisation such a changing landscape, what are the best practices you should be embracing in 2018?
Here are our top tips for increasing your conversions this year.
Personalisation is no longer a novelty - it’s expected. But how can B2B companies use personalisation to convert visitors to leads when at this stage, they know little about them?
In an age of content fatigue, we’re becoming less tolerant of intrusive and interruptive marketing.
Cold calls, spam emails and TV ads can all be blocked at the click of a button, and the power is truly back in the hands of the consumer.
When we have a problem or a question, we set up our chosen device and begin the quest for content.
We flick from article to article, blog to blog, white paper to ebook, trying to find the answer we’re looking for.
We choose where to go next, and who to give our precious information to in exchange for more content. We're completely in control.
