How Your Business Can Survive the Recession
It’s a recession, folks. They have officially brought out the “R” word across all news media. Because they used the “R” word everybody’s first reaction seems to be to pull back. Time to give up. Acting just plain old scared. Are those days gone when a B2B team would take risks by pushing creative boundaries? Stuff they normally do day in and day out. It may be time to get practical. Here’s a list of some of the Practical Trends in B2B Marketing that we are seeing that present a wealth of creative opportunities for your team right now. Here are just a few of the time-tested ideas to help keep your B2B outreach vital and help your business survive the recession:
Get Their “Attention”: You need to get the customers attention by using the Internet to stay in touch with your customer base and some good ole word-of-mouth to break through the short attention barrier many people are having right now.
Test, Test and Test Everything: If you have a list of 1,000 names develop 3-4 campaigns of 25 each to test so you can find out which one has the highest conversion rate. This is the best way to discover what works. Don’t over test but at least test two campaigns to a small group in order to find the one that works best.
Create Great Landing Pages. In any email campaign sending traffic to a specific landing page “Sending traffic to a landing page related to your offer can [always] will improve conversions and by following following landing page best practices can raise them another 40 points.
Help Buyers Research Early in the Process. Hesitant B2B buyers are researching every detail online before they will engage in the sales process with your company. If you will take the time to educate your potential customer you can establish your company as a trusted adviser that understands their problems.
Measure Your Relationship Depth. Be sure and track the number and quality of marketing interactions with each prospect company, so you know the next best marketing steps to take.
Manage Leads: Marketers who excel at managing leads (i.e. acquiring, scoring, nurturing, and routing leads) can more than double the number of marketing leads that turn into a sale.
Lead Nurturing: It’s hard to believe but 95% of the prospects on your site are not ready to speak with sales. Leads that are nurtured before going to sales buy more, require less discounting, and have shorter sales cycles.
Measure relationship depth: Take the time to rack the number and quality of marketing interactions with each prospect, so you know the next best marketing actions to take in future campaigns.
Investment vs. Cost: Help your CEO and CFO think of marketing as asset that drives revenue, not as a liability that needs to be reduce. Take a moment in framing the issue of marketing spending in terms of revenue and growth instead of a cost. Especially during what management may term a “R”.
Invest in Marketing Automation: As marketing operations are become increasingly complex, marketers will need to find ways to automate key processes through technology.
The Bra!nstorm: Don’t stifle yourself in today’s “R” economy. By adhering to today’s tested B2B best practices , your creative outreach efforts can shine while staying on message, on task and under budget.
We welcome your comments and ideas of any of the trends you are observing or that we may of missed.
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