The more change occurring the more questions arise. This year is no exception. B2B Marketers are experiencing ongoing as well as new challenges as we start to hit stride in 2013. What are the big future questions for B2B Marketers? Let's look at a few:
How do we generate more leads and keep them?
Survey after survey indicate B2B marketers have this issue top of mind. Creating demand and filling up a pipeline is loaded with pressure packed environments. In my qualitative buyer research work, I see shifts in behavior on the part of buyers. There are unique sets of goals and behaviors emerging in the area of nurturing. Calling into question how leads should be defined and segmented. Lead research and unique lead persona development will emerge to help B2B marketers address this most important question.
How do we use marketing automation effectively?
Marketing automation has crawled out of infancy stage and is being more widely adopted. Many organizations have been in the "let's just get started" phase. Experiencing the pain of implementation. The next level question is how to make marketing automation more effective to get better results.
How do we operationalize content marketing?
Content marketing has certainly arisen as one of the core capabilities B2B marketing... Read more
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7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
Tags: buyer experience, buyer persona, buyer personas, content marketing, demand generation, Digital Marketing, lead generation, lead nurturing, marketing, marketing automation, social media marketing, Tony Zambito
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4 New Values Affecting How Buyers Perceive You
Perception (Photo credit: Genna G)
A key component of understanding buying decisions is gaining a reality check on how buyers perceive you and whether you match to their criteria. How well organizations are perceived will serve as one of the primary influences shaping buying behaviors and purchase decisions.
Buyer research can reveal many aspects of what comprises buyer perception. Buyer experience is now becoming one of the most important factors contributing to and influencing perceptions. The new digital age is introducing new types of criterion buyers place a value on, which can directly affect their perceptions:
Buyer Experience: previous as well as current experiences can have an enormous impact on how buyers perceive you. Do you think waiting an extra day to return a call was no big deal? Think again.
Engagement: evidence is building on engagement being a factor in shaping buyer perceptions when making purchase decisions. What the "engagement experience" tells buyers can make a big difference. This differs from buyer experience in this way: when you ask customers and prospects to engage - meaning interact - it better not be painful.
Knowledge: the sharing of knowledge and insight is fast emerging as a one area shaping how buyers perceive companies. Content marketers need... Read more
Tags: buyer experience, buyer persona, buyer personas, content marketing, content strategy, marketing, Social Media, Tony Zambito
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions | 1 Comment »
Is Your Lead Generation Off-Target?
Marketo wants to talk revenue cycle and lead nurturing #marketotour (Photo credit: servantofchaos)
A problem facing organizations today is generating more leads. Making this issue even more challenging is changes in buying behavior. Depending on which study to reference, buyers are performing different activities for up to 70% of their buying evaluation before sales intervention.
A recent report by the Aberdeen Group on sales performance shows there is a fair degree of dissatisfaction among sales leaders. 56% saying they were not seeing sufficient growth in top line revenue. Nearly 30% expressed dissatisfaction with lead conversion to sales. A recent CSO Insights report indicated that only 20% of organizations understood their buyer’s buying process. These two perspectives combined point to one of the key issues – targeting the wrong buyer.
Looking back on over 12 years of qualitative buyer research and buyer persona development work, I found in 6 out of every 10 organization– a different buyer was identified than the organization had been targeting! If you are off-target with the buyer – you will be off-target on your demand generation and lead generation.
Getting On Target
Marketing and sales leaders today are looking to increase their percentage of being on target when it comes to lead generation. There... Read more
Tags: buyer persona, buyer persona development, buyer personas, content marketing, demand generation, lead generation, lead nurturing, lead persona, marketing, Sales
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5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade. It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.
We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals. On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt. The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized. These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.
Adapting to New Realities
Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers. Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers. For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers. Yet, there are many more miles to go. My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to... Read more
Tags: brand, buyer behavior, buyer experience, buyer journey, buyer persona, buyer personas, content marketing, customer, demand generation, Digital Marketing, lead generation, marketing, Sales, tonyzambito.com
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Emerging Platforms, Opinions, Research, Social Media, Targeting, Web Analytics, Websites, Wireless, Word of Mouth | No Comments »
The Art of Buying
Galvanized by Art (Photo credit: cobalt123)
The quest to uncover how and why people and businesses engage in the act of buying is becoming an endurance race. Spurred on by increasing social technologies advances. The result is many organizations, whether academia or business, have focused on the science of buying. What we may be losing is critical understanding of the art of buying.
What we are witnessing in the new digital age is the old rules of near total dependency on understanding processes and rules associated with buying is no longer the sole winning ticket. Buying processes and rules have been dissected and analyzed many times over throughout the past few decades. We clung to the belief of knowing the how will lead us to systematic knowledge of how to close more business with buyers. The problem marketing and selling organizations face today is the how – processes and rules – are not as easily defined or structured as in the past. Social technologies have made it possible for new networks and collaboration amongst buyers – causing plenty of flex in processes and rules.
The Why of Buying
If the science of buying has focused on the how of buying, the art of... Read more
Tags: b2b marketing, buyer persona, buyer personas, buying behavior, Digital Marketing, marketing, marketing effectiveness, qualitative analytics, qualitative research, Sales, sales effectiveness
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Opinions, Social Media, Targeting, Word of Mouth | No Comments »
