As a B2B marketer, you face a variety of challenges — from developing engaging content to making effective use of a limited budget. Another one of the main difficulties that you (and 48% of other B2B marketers) experience is generating leads. Whether it's a lack of interest or budget, it's a daily struggle to hook a lead and turn them into a customer. The first step to address this issue is ensuring you are using the most effective B2B marketing channels.
In this blog, we’ll look at 3 of the most effective channels you can use to connect with a B2B prospect.
Content marketing
As a content marketer, you aren’t necessarily trying to promote a brand directly, but might be attempting simply to raise awareness of the industry or field that a company offers products or services for.
The advantages of content marketing
- Build awareness and trust – High quality content will help you start building relationships with prospects, even if they aren’t ready to buy just yet.- Cost effective – The costs associated with producing an informative ebook or blog that speak directly to the needs of a potential lead are relatively low. You can get fancy with YouTube content, but you can also put together a low cost demo and record it on your laptop for next to nothing.
- Connect with people – The number of people who are using ad blockers to filter out online advertising is growing. Content marketing offers a great opportunity to connect with a potential lead, even if they use an ad blocker.
The disadvantages of content marketing
- Content marketing is one phase of the marketing funnel – If you’re trying to get leads as fast as possible, content marketing is unlikely to help you achieve that goal. Content marketing is a part of a system designed to build a relationship with a lead, and this doesn’t happen overnight.
- Producing certain types of content takes time – The production time for certain types of content marketing is undoubtedly a lot longer than others. Where you might be able to produce a blog or a quick demo in a few hours, it will take longer to produce a professional looking ebook or YouTube video.
- You may not have the skills in-house – The reality is, while some of us may be running circles around the competition in our fields of expertise, we may be terrible at writing or producing video content. In this case you’ll need to find a partner to help you with creating the content you need.
Social media
Whether you’re talking about social media giants like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, or some of the more niche services such as SlideShare or Pinterest, you’re likely to find a social media platform that can help you achieve your B2B marketing goals.
The advantages of social media
- Let's connect right now – Social media is a great tool for sharing a message and receiving quick feedback on it, which many other marketing channels don’t allow for. This, in turn, can help a company start a relationship with a potential lead very quickly.
- Improved global reach – Establishing yourself as an authoritative voice on a social media channel will help you connect with other businesses who are interested in your services.
- It’s cost effective – If you’re looking to raise awareness about your brand and don’t have a lot of money to do so, picking the right social media platform for a B2B campaign can help you find new leads at a reasonable cost.
The disadvantages of social media
- Let’s connect right now – Just as social media giveth, social media can taketh away. One of the greatest strengths of this marketing channel is the ability to connect with people and get immediate feedback. However, this feedback is not always positive, and any misstep in messaging could damage your brand.
- High maintenance – Whether you’re keeping an eye out for trolls, unhappy clients, or just keeping tabs on the marketing messaging and security, social media channels can be high maintenance in terms of monitoring.
- It may not be cost-effective for your industry – Niche social media channels that are directly relevant to your offering may be worthwhile to invest time in, but not all social media channels are equal in this regard.
- It’s not that effective for B2B marketing – The ROI for social media marketing is often confused with social media selling, and unfortunately the marketing side doesn’t perform as well. Social selling is more proactive and relevant as a result.
Telemarketing
Let’s make one thing clear: B2B telemarketing is a very different beast from B2C telemarketing, which is known for its aggressive cold-calling strategy.
One of the key differences is that B2B targets specific decision makers in a company, where B2C telemarketing often takes a “blanket” approach to reaching people. Your engagement with the potential lead will also not result in an immediate response of yes or no. A good B2B telemarketer is not looking to close a sale immediately, but improve awareness of your product or services and open the door for further interactions down the line.
The advantages of telemarketing
- It’s more personal – Unlike emails, ebooks or social media channels, a phone call is a very personal form of B2B marketing. This allows a skilled telemarketer to quickly create rapport with a lead.- It extends your reach – One of the major benefits of telemarketing is its ability to extend the reach of your sales team, increasing your sales territory, while still feeling like a personal interaction.
- You’ll find out if they’re a good fit or not very quickly – While you’ll undoubtedly have done some research on your lead, only during the conversation will you know for certain whether your product or service is a good fit. Thankfully this is done quickly, so you don’t waste resources trying to get them to buy something they can’t even use.
The disadvantages of telemarketing
- You may not be able to connect with your potential lead the first time – You may need to reach out to the lead multiple times before you actually connect with them.- B2B telemarketers need to be skilled – Even though B2B telemarketers will generally receive a much more positive response than B2C telemarketers, they will still need to be trained with the necessary skills to navigate any initial hesitation or resistance from the lead.
Understanding the real potential of telemarketing
If your business is struggling to grow its B2B leads, it might be because you don’t have an effective B2B telemarketing strategy. To learn more about B2B telemarketing and the benefits it can bring to your business, download our ebook.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what GCL Direct can offer your business, our staff are more than happy to talk to you about the services we offer and how they can help grow your B2B leads. Be sure to contact us today to arrange a call so we can help you achieve this goal.
