B2B Marketing 2.0: How to Engage Social Buyers and Break Marketing/Sales Gridlock

Buyers in businesses have embraced the web and social media tools to find and research solutions, just like individual consumers. Of course, a "considered" purchase of an enterprise software system costing $50,000 or more is much more complex than buying a $200 digital camera.

Still, the process often starts with research on the web and ends with a purchase. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers are optimizing what happens in the middle with strategies and tools to engage with buyers more effectively, and increase the flow of qualified leads to sales reps.

B2B marketing tools, first introduced a decade ago, have moved into the mainstream. CSO Insights' 2008 Lead Life Cycle Optimization study found that technology is playing a larger role: 51 percent of marketing organizations are using lead management systems and 60 percent are using some form of lead scoring before passing leads to sales. The global economic crisis may boost demand further, because it has "turned the spotlight on improving efficiency," says Will Schnabel, Silverpop's VP of international markets and former CEO of Vtrenz, a lead management pioneer acquired in 2007 by Silverpop.

Buyer-Centricity

Alight, a software maker of planning tools for finance and product managers, exemplifies a new breed B2B marketer that matches marketing and buying processes. Typically buyers find Alight through a Google search with keywords like "budgeting software" and then click on a paid ad promising to help the buyer "learn the 5 capabilities budgeting software should deliver." A landing page invites the prospect to fill out a short form to view an online demo.

Whether the offer is a white paper, webinar, demo or free trial, there's nothing remarkable about this. Anyone can easily place ads on Google or other search engines, create a registration form, and collect "leads."

The key is how these leads—more accurately called contacts or inquiries—are handled. Done right, it's magical. Alight uses Marketo's lead management solution to collect the leads, generate stats on what users do after they click, and hand over qualified leads to sales via a Salesforce.com connection. Prospects who don't reply immediately to a phone call are put on an automated "nurturing" program to received targeted messages with other offers designed to revive interest at a future date.

Quite possibly the company couldn't exist without this "B2B marketing 2.0" approach. According to Alight's VP of Sales Ben Lamorte, VCs didn't think the company could sell software solutions to mid-market enterprises at a price point from $10,000 to $50,000 without expensive feet on the street—which can increase the cost of sales to the point that the business model isn't viable. Alight is beating conventional wisdom by combining effective search campaigns with affordable tools like Marketo for lead management, Salesforce.com for sales automation, Citrix GoToMeeting for online meetings, and Camtasia to turn recorded demos into short video clips.

Understanding the Buying Process

Consumers research online, so do business buyers. A 2007 study by Enquiro Search Solutions found that 65.3 percent of B2B prospects in the Awareness phase started their search with general search engines. As they move through the Research and Negotiation phases, prospects increase their usage of B2B vertical search engines and vendor web sites.

Source: customerthink