In B2B technology marketing and B2B technology-related companies, as with most things, the best place to start is with strategy. As per various B2B experts, creating a good strategy helps ensure that tactics are aligned with the right goals.
Here it is worth noting that traditionally many B2B technology and B2B lead-generating companies have grown based on relationship marketing. (If you're in a newer subsection of the technology industry, like SaaS, this might not apply to you - but if you're in a more advanced field, like custom manufacturing or technology integration, it almost certainly does). We agree that B2B technology companies, because they serve other companies with valuable services, usually have a high percentage of referral sales. But it just highlights how few B2B technology companies use online marketing well - and at the same time how many opportunities there are for smart B2B technology companies to use online marketing to their advantage.
The core of a B2B technology company's marketing strategy consists of four stages: awareness, conversion, closure, and delight.
Under each step, we have included the functions most suitable to support it. Let's dive into each of them.
Awareness phase
The awareness phase is about getting your business name. Many technology organizations and telemarketing lead generation companies struggle in this area - it's a big problem. This is the most critical area of the entire funnel because it is the engine for all the other stages. Marketing without awareness is like trying to build a car without an engine. All you need to make marketing work is traffic and leads. Without good awareness, you will never have enough opportunities to take advantage of the growth of your business. At its most basic level, this stage is about whether your customer is aware of your business. There are many ways to do this, but we'll stick with the ones that don't involve a chicken suit and a street corner.
Conversion Stage
Once you have traffic to your website, the next step is to convert it into leads. This is the core of the transformation phase. Now the big question: how do you do it?
Most people think that websites have one important call to action (or CTA, as we marketers call them): the Contact Us page. This is great for customers who are ready to trade right away - maybe one per 10,000 visitors to your site.
What will you do with the other 9999 visitors? The answer is to engage them with content that helps solve their problems. For example, if you are a managed service provider, you may have a downloadable cybersecurity policy template. Potentially interested readers get a valuable PDF file full of help and now you have another potential customer on your contact list. Brilliant!
The key to success here is to create conversion points for each offer. In other words, give anyone who might be interested in doing business with you a chance to learn more before they do. Done well, you can convert 2-5% of all visitors to your website on a relatively consistent basis.
This is the key to creating lasting results in internet marketing.
Closing Phase
Most of the closing phase takes place over the phone and in the conference room. When a customer approaches you for a proposal or a conversation, digital marketing may not immediately come to mind - but don't dismiss it. You are still doing good email marketing in the closing phase. These can be case studies, samples of your work, or fact sheets. Shouldn't you put as much effort into these emails as you do send out letters? You need a solid proposal template, a great PowerPoint template, and the ability to make a presentation at the final stage. But your emails and social media content can also help close deals.
Delight Phase
Your marketing moves to another stage when a lead becomes a customer. But you still need to present a strong marketing effort to your customers. For most B2B businesses, long-term customers and referrals are critical to your long-term success. Satisfied customers will tell others and may make a proper connection for you in the future. You use email marketing to varying degrees here. You can have a newsletter to keep them updated with your latest updates, services, and products. This can play an important role in enhancing knowledge in the midst of changing technical landscapes. And of course, you use personal email to regularly contact clients to build relationships.
Common Challenges With The Phases
Two common problems can prevent you from actually implementing this sales and marketing approach. The first and most common mistake is to mislead a potential customer. Chances are, someone will contact you after a short visit to your website and ask for a quote or quote. That might be fine, but if they don't have the information they need, they're not yet qualified to be in the closing phase. They are not aware of your service; they don't know what makes your business unique. Another mistake is the inefficient division of efforts into phases. Our recommendation is this: 80% of your efforts should be in the awareness phase (or "showcase" phase) of the channel. Of the remaining 20%, 10% should be used for conversions, and the rest should be split between Close and Delight options. It's about generating traffic and building an audience. It is much easier to optimize each step if you have awareness.
Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint
One last word of encouragement before moving on to the next part: Your marketing plan is a marathon. There are small victories, but this is a game of endurance. Confirm it completely. Create the right materials and take the right actions to grow your business. Even the top B2B companies spend enough time on research before executing the plan.
B2B Technology Company Websites
Okay, we've covered the strategy. Now let's move on to tactics. The most important part of marketing is your website. It's your virtual track, it's your store, your display board, and more. A website is undoubtedly an important part of all your marketing, referral, and conversion efforts. So it must be wonderful.
Look for Simplicity and Focus
There is so much to write about website design and conversion optimization (our website has articles on these topics that you should read - simply put), but the most important thing to understand is that your website can't talk about you. Your client needs to find a solution to his problem. What does it look like? It looks like a website that speaks to your prospect, not a website that tells them about your company's statistics and success through the jargon and condescending bragging. (Success stories have their time and place, but they are not everywhere on every page.) Every page has its job - so let's talk about each page.
Service/Solution Pages
It's pretty simple: Your B2B technology company's solution pages should focus on the solutions you offer. But things get a little more interesting when we bring our stages to these pages. In other words, what purpose should these pages serve in your funnel? The answer is usually that they should increase both awareness and conversions; they should drive traffic to your website and play a role in converting traffic into contacts and leads. If you are location-based, the SEO focus of these pages should be a LOCATION SOLUTION. Your local SEO (people who find you in your city through Google Maps listings or snack pack listings) will benefit from this attention.
Regarding conversion actions: You should have a call to action that contacts you for more information, but you should also have a higher funnel takeaway. This could be self-help or a guide for a service that your potential customers can sign up for (read: give you an email address). You win because you now have a new lead email and they get help or value along the way.
Case studies or customer pages
You can tell more about yourself here. But even when you're talking about yourself, you need to keep your customers' needs in the spotlight. The key here is to provide "social proof" that your business works. People need to know that it does what you say it does and that it has worked for people like them in the past. This can be done in a few different ways. The most important way is to get referrals. This is important because your visitors want to hear how it works and what it's like for them. To start, you need to collect 5-7 recommendations; that's all you need for now. (You may want to bring them to life in video form later - this can increase engagement.)
Second, you want to include at least one case study. Walk through a scenario to solve a problem or discuss how your product or service was produced to solve a problem. This needs to be done in great detail because this is where the customer spends time trying to figure out if your solutions are right for them. Third, you can provide a list of clients. If you've worked with several impressive clients, this is your chance to impress. If you're not sure if your clients should be featured, here's something to report: first, you need to show enough of your clients so you don't seem small, and second, if you want, you'll give your competitors the majority of your client list. If you don't know if it's worth it, it probably isn't.
B2B Tech Firm Blog
B2B sales processes can be complicated, which is why you need a blog. Here's why: a blog is the best place to grow your website's content to implement your SEO strategy. Ideally, your website should be blogged quite often because Google loves content-producing websites. Additionally, you should spend time developing a keyword strategy. Blogging is not about writing your whims; it's a strategic exercise in writing thought-provoking content around keywords and topics that interest potential customers at different stages of the funnel. You may have the opportunity to write about your hopes and dreams, but mostly you write about topics that will help you achieve valuable rankings in search engines like Google.
Contact Us Page
Your Contact Page should be easy enough. Include all the contact information a prospect might need and implement a contact form to help people submit questions after hours. You can even try some more specific techniques to automatically schedule demo consultations - tools like Calendly or Hubspot are great for this. Keep it simple, but also set expectations for what they will get when they contact you. This may mean a brief description of what you will discuss and how long it may last. (For example, here's our contact page.)
Conversion Forms
Your website has content that gets results: newsletters, e-books, webinars, demo videos—all the content we talked about at the beginning. covers different services and different stages of your sales funnel. Everyone should have a page to download, and you want those pages to work better and better every month. The conversion is an impressive feat; If you have 1000 visitors per month and a conversion rate of 1%, you will receive 10 contacts per month. Increase your conversion rate to 3% and you can triple your monthly contacts to 30, greatly increasing your leads
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Email Marketing for B2B Technology Companies
Email Marketing is the workhorse of your online marketing. It is used at every stage of your funnel, from the very personal to blasts targeted at contact groups. This is how it works.
Types of Emails You Send:
Thought Leader Email
This is commonly called an "email newsletter." While in the past newsletters were much more about the company and its internal news, now the change in the sales and marketing process makes the newsletter a valuable proposition for the customer. You send information and content to recipients to provide added value.
Sales Drip
This is a series of emails you send when someone has downloaded your content. So when someone downloads an e-book or subscribes to a newsletter, you send them this email series. This is an automated series of five follow-up emails by topic.
Thank You - This is an email to thank the user for downloading your content and showing goodwill.
Problem/Solution - This is an email explaining a common problem and your solution to it.
Objection - Overcome common objections to your services and why your solution is best.
Certificate - An example of successful completion of your service.
Sales Letter - This is the entire series of ASK where you focus on sales activities.
Each should be sent about a day or two after the previous email - unless you have a specific strategy in mind, don't wait any longer. You don't want recipients to forget your brand and solution before your next email arrives.
Direct Mail
Direct Mail is just regular email, or what marketers might call personal emails. Sending sales-based emails should be a regular part of your sales and marketing process. These include the following types of emails.
Check-in - See how the customer is doing personally or professionally.
Updates - Sending updates about your business that may affect the customer.
Value Add - Find an article or content that can provide value to your potential or existing customer.
Service/Solution Reminders
No matter how long a customer has been working with you, they need to be reminded of your solutions - or they'll likely forget what you did. Often, the customer will take you to the offer they received, even if it is not your best or most profitable offer. They may even have a problem in an area that your solutions can solve, but they don't know how to solve it. Your reminders are simply a way to let them know what you're doing, who you're doing it for, and what they can expect in the process. It is important to list your fixes as "main fixes" instead of "new" fixes in reminders. New solutions are open for inspection, while core solutions are trusted. So make sure you don't post new solutions via email. rather, do it on a case-by-case basis and target those who will benefit. After your new solution is reviewed, you can publish it as a reminder to all customers.
Feedback
Finally, the feedback email is important to gauge how well you did for your customers. This is a great source for recommendations, NPS scores, or any other feedback mechanism you may need to improve and optimize your service.
You can use a simple survey platform like Survey monkey and send your emails to your current email provider with links to get feedback. Thus concluding our B2B strategies for tech companies.
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