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B2B IT Marketing – Getting the basics right

convertinh your home pageLet’s be honest, we’ve all been burnt by a marketing investment that’s gone wrong. I can completely understand why business owners put the power of business growth solely in the hands of a sales team.

But this strategy is limited to the number of successful calls that can be made. And, if we’re being frank, IT buyers buy differently these days.

Here’s why traditional B2B IT selling just isn’t working anymore.

80% of B2B It decisions start online
Nothing surprising about this, but according to marketing sherpa over 80% of all business buying decisions start online. We research search engines, forums and social media to form our opinion. So if your web site looks great but your not tracking it or optimising it for your industries key word, you’ll not get found.

We are 3 times more likely to buy from someone we know like or trust
“Hi, this is Dan from TechuCorp can I speak to the person responsible for your Data Storage…”. Come on, any senior decision maker knows the traditional outbound selling routine – they’ll hate you for it and any future attempt to contact will be marred by the 18 year old telemarketer who made no attempt to understand their business before they picked up the phone. Stop doing it, you damage your reputation.

According to comscore research, we are 3 times more likely to act upon the advise of someone we know, like or trust. Perhaps this is why Social media platforms are growing in numbers compared to overall internet use. It also explains why recent graduates spend 4 time more communication on social media than using email – (in social and business context)

Over the last 12 months I’ve seen traditional forms of outboud marketing (email, telemarketing, direct marketing) fall dramatically, but inbound (social media, lead nurturing)  marketing increase. That brings me quite neatly onto my final point.

Start ‘nurturing’ your leads.
Today’s IT buyers need proof that you can add value to their specific business challenges. The good news is that most business communities are small and well connected and regularly share industry challenges online through forums, social media platforms et al. This is where you can influence and add value.

So given the fact that the way we buy has changed and how can we best get our message across? What should we be looking to invest our time in? Here’s our thoughts.

1. Get your message straight
Yes you do CRM. Yes you do it for the financial services sector. But why should anyone other that you give a hoot?? How does it improve their challenges?

2. Know your audience
Of course you want to sell to everyone. Of course you want to speak to the CXO of every business with a turnover of £10m+ from Plymouth to Portugal. But you also need to see ROI in the shortest time possible, so pick your easiest targets first. Remember the bowling pin worldwind? Target a market you can connect with. Identified where they hang out on LinkedIN Groups and understand what they are talking about and where you can add value.

Remember you’ve not spend anything marketing yet but you’re already in better share to see a return.

3. Build an online presence for your web site
I’m always amazed at organisations that spend fortunes on building a web site that never gets traffic or gets tracked.

Remember 80%+ of all buying decisions start online. So think about the key word you need to be found for. This creatively so you don’t compete. Once you’ve got a list consider the content on your site. Does it match the key words that your chasing? This is what the search engins will rank you for. Set up a pay per click campaign with Google and test your key words. Build your SEO so all search engines can find you. Develop great content that your audience will love and share on their social media profiles – the word will only get spread if your message is great.

4. Get social
We don’t sell chocolate bars to millions of people everyday, we’re B2B IT marketers. Most of our clients have a very niche industry with room for 1 or 2 competitors. So it’s easy to identify who we should be talking to, who makes the decisions and what the chances are of us being a suitable fit. By far the best tool for social networking is LInkedIN and the biggest users of LinkedIn are those in IT. forget buying poorly managed prospects lists, your prospects manage their own information on Linkedin. Get a knock down dead profile, get networking on discussion groups, get building your network.

Set aside time or outsource the management your key business profiles.

Don’t ignore Twitter, Facebook or Google. All carry significant weight in driving traffic to your site. Products like hotsuite make this easy.

5. Incentivise (Sp?) your prospects to engage
For any B2B IT marketing to be successful you need to know where your product/solution/service fit’s into the need of the target audience. To get this insight you need to engage them. Incentives can be a great way to get a decision maker to impart their problems via a survey or online poll/ questionaire.

6. Automate your communications
When we talk about marketing automation we don’t mean big, expensive CRM system we mean a well defined process for categorising your prospects & communicating to them in a way that’s going to build a relationship, so when they are in a position to buy you are odds on favourite.

7. Fail to plan, plan to fail
Do not invest a penny in marketing until you’ve worked out where and when you’ll see it’s return. Going to market half cocked will cost you dearly. Define your message – test it with your audience – then start spending once you know the reaction will be favourable and your activities can be executed.