B2B Archives - Page 2 of 3

4 Best Practices for Creating Engaging B2B Content

There’s a massive amount of content on the web today. Even before the global pandemic that forced everyone to stay home, reports indicated that over two-thirds of all data on the web was created sometime in the last few years.

Unfortunately, a lot of that data isn’t practical. The same is true in the world of B2B content. Many companies are embracing the practice – more than 4 in 5 B2B marketers use content marketing as a strategy, according to HubSpot surveys from 2021.

The problem? Not enough companies are doing content well. The prevalence of content marketing strategy means that many organizations are rushing to put out content simply “to have something there,” or even worse, just as a way to game SEO algorithms to increase their page rankings.

If this sounds like your company’s strategy, it needs to make a change. Whether creating content for a specific part of your funnel or more generalized marketing content, here are four tips to give you a better chance of engaging your audience.

Remove Fluff and Filler Ruthlessly

If you’ve done any kind of search recently related to any type of marketing or digital business phrase, you’ve probably noticed a common issue. There’s a lot of useless content out there. Sure, you can still find valuable stuff on any subject, and Google has been trying its hardest to update its algorithm quickly enough to weed out low-quality search results. But the proliferation of content and search engine marketing means there are still plenty of pages designed just to help the publisher move up search engine results – not to help someone in their target audience.

There are two simple (but not always easy) methods for making your content more valuable. First, you have to cut all fluff and filler from your content. Be ruthless – if there’s a question about whether or not something is worth including, you should probably scrap it. This ruthlessness even extends to things writers love, like using outside anecdotes or drawn-out metaphors.

It’s particularly important to make your content easy to interpret and valuable when it’s being used further down your B2B funnel. Decision-makers at companies making significant purchases usually want to maximize their time considering different vendors and solutions. Sifting through unnecessarily long content doesn’t give them a positive perspective of your company or its offering.

It’s particularly important to make your content easy to interpret and valuable when it’s being used further down your B2B funnel. Click To Tweet

The second important step in removing fluff and filler is making your content more digestible so prospects can scan and read it more quickly. This method is called “scannable content.” According to Microsoft, a few essential strategies for scannable content include:

Put your most important content above the fold or the part of the page the user doesn’t need to scroll down to see.
Be brief, clear, and concise. Don’t use more words than you need.
Include navigation options for a long document.

You might also think about using progress bars or page numbers so users know how much more they have left in the content. Some more modern publications will even estimate how long it will take to read a piece of written content.

Use the Right Hook

By its nature, B2B content has to be highly customized. Buyers in this sector have specific and dynamic needs regarding what they’re looking for out of a business solution. These discerning needs are part of the reason tactics like content and account-based marketing are so popular with B2B marketers in the first place.

And while the personalized requirements of B2B content marketing might make the process more difficult in some ways, in another sense, it makes creating engaging content easier. Knowing a lot about your prospect’s specific needs and challenges means you can present more relevant information.

In content marketing parlance, a “hook” immediately grabs users’ attention and makes them want to continue consuming the content. Whether it’s a headline, the first sentence of a blog article or social media post, or the initial words of a video, a good hook can be the difference between someone consuming an entire piece of content or bouncing out of it quickly. In any B2B content setting, you want to make your hook as personalized as possible. In the best-case scenario, a prospect should feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

Be Interactive

This tip isn’t always fully applicable, depending on the channel you use for your content. But if you’re using a platform where interaction is a big component – such as social media – it’s important to include an avenue for users to engage with the content. In the B2B setting, it’s common to see posts on social media that ask users to share their own experiences, for example.

If you can’t make your content directly interactive for users, try to help them imagine themselves in the same situation. Visualization is one of the most powerful psychological tools available to us as humans. Putting your content’s audience in a position to visualize themselves using your product or service is one of the best ways to help nurture them closer to converting into customers. Whether you achieve this by including a few poignant questions at the end of an article, or some interesting visuals in an infographic or video, it’s critical to draw the user into becoming more than just a passive consumer of your content.

Measure and Analyze the Right Metrics

These steps are fantastic, but some may work better for you than others. Some may not work at all! How will you know if this is the case and which tactics may or may not apply? There’s only one way: measuring and analyzing how well it performs.

The big challenge many companies face is not necessarily analyzing metrics – it’s choosing the right metrics to follow. We see numerous prospects encountering the same problem: their high-level metrics like views, click-through rates, and session time numbers are good, but they aren’t leading to conversions or sales.

That’s why it’s so important to track the correct numbers. In the hugely broad, dynamic world of business data, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by fancy metrics or numbers that seem important but don’t tell you much about your content. To overcome this challenge, think intentionally about a few of the most critical numbers that matter to your business and its content efforts, then make sure you stick to tracking just those numbers. It’s okay to revisit your core metrics from time to time to ensure they are still working the way you need, but don’t be swayed from measuring the KPIs you initially decided were most important.

And if you need any help figuring out which metrics to track or how to keep your content engaging, our expert team at FunnelEnvy is ready to help. We have several years of experience working with B2B companies to optimize their funnel content and ensure they can stand out in today’s noisy content marketing sector. Click here to fill out a short questionnaire and learn more about our pricing structure.

By Raj C|2022-11-17T03:29:55-08:00November 28th, 2022|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments

4 Key Metrics for Your B2B Sales Pipeline

There’s a lot for marketers today to consider when it comes to tactics for bringing in new business, but your sales pipeline is what ultimately defines the success of all your funnels, marketing campaigns, and other efforts to add new clients and revenue consistently. But considering the huge array of software tools and data available to modern B2B marketers, it can feel overwhelming to measure all the metrics in a pipeline.

We’ve identified four of the most important metrics for B2B marketers looking to understand their pipeline better. Every company is different, but in our experience, an organization can get a great sense of the overall health of its pipeline by paying attention to the four metrics below.

Velocity

Sales velocity is defined by HubSpot as the measurement of how quickly a deal moves through a pipeline and turns into actual revenue. Velocity is an important metric because it helps you understand and identify obstacles or bottlenecks in your sales process. It doesn’t matter how great your landing pages or nurture sequences are – if there’s an issue with your pipeline velocity, it’ll constrain your sales.

It doesn’t matter how great your landing pages or nurture sequences are – if there’s an issue with your pipeline velocity, it’ll constrain your sales. Click To Tweet

The widely-accepted formula for calculating pipeline velocity is to multiply the number of opportunities by the average deal value, then times your team’s average close rate, and divide that number by the length of your sales cycle. This formula is a great starting place to closely analyze each part of your pipeline to determine any obstacles.

For example, perhaps when evaluating the sales cycle length, you realize that your sales team is taking too long to follow up after the initial appointment with a prospect. Armed with this knowledge, you can adjust your sales process and inform your reps to follow up immediately after an appointment to keep the prospect moving through the sales journey.

Deal Size

The size of your deals doesn’t require any kind of complex formula to calculate, but it can still be difficult to identify issues in this area without some intentional analysis. For example, if your company has the same number of opportunities with the same sales cycle length as last year, but your revenue is down, it’s a sign that you may not be pursuing large enough deals.

Addressing a deal size issue is solely a matter of prospecting. Here are a few tips for finding higher-value prospects:

Use account-based marketing (or ABM). ABM defines a process by which you identify a handful of high-value accounts and create customized sales and marketing collateral explicitly designed for those accounts. According to Gartner, by the end of 2020, over 70% of marketers at midsize and large B2B organizations will be using or testing ABM.
Invest in thought leadership or content that brands give for free to gain trust and credibility by helping its intended audience. In a study published by LinkedIn and Edelman last year, 60% of B2B buyers said thought leadership builds credibility when a brand enters a new category, and 54% said they purchased a new product or service they had not previously considered. Thought leadership can help attract a more discerning type of buyer.
Get social. Participate in events, post on social media, and engage with your prospects in their communities. Remember to be genuine – it’s easy for people to identify someone who’s only interacting with them for the sake of a sale. Let your natural sense of curiosity and desire to help people guide your interactions.

Close Rate

Another straightforward yet critical metric for your sales funnel, a close rate identifies the number of prospects that become paying clients relative to the overall number of leads generated by your marketing efforts. Every company will have a slightly different close rate depending on the nature of their business. A more specialized company with a niche audience might be fine with a close rate between 5% and 7%, while others might be aiming closer to double digits or beyond.

While it’s possible to find general data online about close rates, a better approach is to track your own company’s close rate and assess where it needs to be for sufficient revenue growth. If there are problems with your close rate, it’s generally a sign to evaluate your sales team, the specifics of your client offer, or both. Solicit feedback from prospects whenever possible to better understand which elements are slowing down your close rate.

Sales to Support Ratio

This ratio may not be specifically related to the performance of your sales or marketing, but it’s still vital to understand how your sales pipeline affects the rest of your operations. It’s sometimes expressed as “sales staff to support staff,” but it isn’t necessarily just the number of people working at the organization in each department. For smaller companies with employees or contractors who handle multiple organizational tasks, it isn’t a simple “this to that” ratio.

However you quantify it, this metric is vital to understanding how much of your capacity the company uses for each client. You can also track this number based on deal size, client longevity, and other measures to get a sense of which types of clients require the most attention from your support team. You can use this data in your sales and marketing efforts going forward, helping you focus on the best types of buyers for your offering.

In a well-balanced organization, sales and support can handle a sufficient volume of responsibility that allows the company to stay on track with its goals. In assessing this metric at your own company, you may need to either increase your sales activity or add additional capacity for support, depending on how much your company’s product requires.

Final Word on Key Metrics for Your Pipeline

It’s essential to customize your pipeline metrics like any sales or marketing data. Every company has its own needs, meaning it might not make sense to track the same metrics as an organization in a different industry.

For best results with these pipeline metrics, track them for as long as possible and establish a performance baseline in each area. Note where the numbers are when things at the company are going well and vice versa when you hit a slow period. Doing this allows you to gain insight into where each of your metrics should be, giving you better context when you analyze your pipeline going forward.

If you’re unsure about what steps you need to take or which metrics to track to help improve the performance of your organization’s sales and marketing performance, our team is ready to help. FunnelEnvy has several years of combined experience working with B2B clients to identify gaps in their funnels, tweak critical elements like forms and landing pages, and optimize other aspects of the lead nurturing process to maximize your conversion rate.

Click here to take a short quiz and learn more about our pricing structure.

By Raj C|2022-10-20T04:37:11-07:00October 31st, 2022|Analytics, A/B Testing|0 Comments

Top B2B Marketing Landing Page Trends

A landing page is the critical element of a funnel upon which its broader results hinge. You could have slick visuals and top-notch marketing automation software – if an error or obstacle on your landing page prevents visitors from converting, it will constrain your results and limit the effectiveness of your digital marketing.

Even if your landing page has been working well and capturing a healthy number of people, it can always be optimized so that you can convert even more visitors. The bigger question is, how do you take steps to optimize your landing page?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Everyone’s offering and their funnel will be slightly different. However, even in the dynamic world of B2B, where there is a strong focus on customization, our team has seen certain trends emerge across several industries.

Just remember, trends in landing page design operate the same way as trends in any other industry – fashion, art, music, etc. That means you don’t need to take this blog post as a comprehensive guide to all the elements you must include on a landing page. Think of it the way you might think about trends in clothing: you wouldn’t rush out and replace your entire wardrobe with only the items trending at this year’s top fashion shows.

Instead, you would look at what kind of clothes are trending, think about your signature style, and decide how you might incorporate a few popular pieces into what you already wear. The same goes for your landing page – instead of completely overhauling a page to keep up with the latest trends, decide which of them make sense and edit your pages accordingly.

Live Messaging and Chatbots

If you’ve been on any recently-updated landing page in the last year or two, you probably noticed a recurring pattern: a chat window pops up, often on the bottom-right side of your screen, prompting you to ask a question about a product or service, or perhaps giving you details of the company’s latest sale or launch.

The rise of support via messenger and chatbot platforms on company websites has been meteoric. According to Fortune, the global chatbot industry expects to grow at a rapid clip of 22.5% between 2020 and 2027. That significant growth rate didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of customers in many industries preferring to get their questions answered immediately via chat instead of sitting on hold or waiting around for an email inquiry to get answered. Over 40% of customers prefer getting answers from chat immediately, compared to 32% who prefer the phone and 23% who prefer email.

You don’t need to build a sophisticated AI-based chat platform from scratch. Plenty of simple chat platforms allow you to use either a real person or a basic bot to message people who have questions about your offering. Check out tools like HubSpot, Drift, Intercom, and Twilio as a starting point in your search for live messenger and chatbot solutions.

Inclusive Design

According to Adobe, inclusive design is a style that “considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference.” In other words, it’s a design that allows the broadest range of people to view and use your landing page content, even if they use adaptive technology or have some type of disability.

A great place to start regarding inclusive design is the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG), created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Government bodies, universities, and other organizations leading the way in accessible digital content use these guidelines.

A few simple elements that you can incorporate right away to improve accessibility:

Add captions to all video content, whether live or pre-recorded
Allow users to pause and play audio and video content
Allow users to resize text by at least 200% without assistive technology
Don’t include any images or visual elements that flash more than three times

Progress Indicators and Icons

Another common element on today’s landing pages is some type of indicator to let users know how they are progressing on a form. Percentage bars or icons representing the number of form pages completed and remaining are a great addition to almost any landing page. By some metrics, you can increase your website’s conversion rate by 30% just by adding a progress bar to your landing page.

Ideally, you want to keep your landing page to no more than four separate pages or sub-forms. If you need to collect more information than this, think about adjusting your funnel or trying to gather extra data after the conversion event has taken place. For example, if your landing page is to book appointments, there may be some kinds of information that you can collect on your first sales call instead of on the page form. Keeping your form as short as possible and letting people know how many more sub-forms they have to complete is a great way to improve landing page conversion.

Minimalist Design

Check out this landing page from Squarespace:

Notice the simplicity: it has the company’s logo, the main form, and an option that allows visitors who aren’t ready to buy to return to the home page. This type of minimalist design is everywhere on modern landing pages, from those related to the most complex B2B software to those offering the most basic B2C commodity.

If you’re going for the minimalist approach, strike a good balance between design and functionality. Don’t sacrifice important information that prospects need to know simply to include as much space as possible. However, it can be helpful to re-evaluate your landing pages with a close eye to determine if there are elements that you may be able to remove.

A final tip for the minimalist or “blank space” approach: use colors that make the main elements of your page stand out. A white background typically means using brighter colors on elements like links, buttons, and headers. Be sure to pick a color scheme that works well together and doesn’t clash or cause any readability issues for visitors.

Final Thoughts On Landing Page Trends

Remember: you don’t need to adopt any of these trends on your existing landing pages, particularly if your funnel already works well at converting visitors. However, when looking to improve your landing page’s conversion rate, it can be helpful to look at current trends in landing page design as a starting point to determine what positive changes you could make.

Our expert team at FunnelEnvy can help by evaluating your landing page and identifying a few key areas you can improve. With only minor tweaks to your page, it’s possible to increase your conversion rate by a significant percentage that expands your marketing funnel and provides real gains to your organization’s bottom line.
Click here to complete a short quiz and find out more about how FunnelEnvy may be able to assist with optimizing your funnel’s landing page to incorporate some of the latest trends and designs for better results.

By Raj C|2022-09-21T04:41:22-07:00October 3rd, 2022|Landing Pages|0 Comments

How to Map Content Creation to Your B2B Funnel

Anyone working in marketing today is probably aware of the importance of creating content. Thanks to the growth of content marketing over the last decade or so companies in every field are rushing to produce content they believe will drive revenue and improve their brand awareness among their target audience.

Unfortunately, many content marketers don’t get it right. They direct an internal resource or outside contractor to churn out a set number of content pieces about pre-arranged topics on a monthly or quarterly basis. Robert Rose, chief strategy officer at the Content Marketing Institute’s Content Advisory consultancy, has spoken about this issue before, calling it the “vending machine” approach to content creation.

As Rose points out, not only does this approach not scale, it positions content as nothing more than a to-do list for the marketing department. A better approach is to first understand the goals and objectives behind each piece of content pertaining to different stages of your sales funnel. From there, you can create content in a way that aligns smoothly with your funnel and provides tangible value for your audience.

How do you go about doing that? It’ll be slightly different for everyone depending on your specific target audience and the funnel for which you’re creating content. Below, we dive into a few tips that any marketer can apply to B2B content creation.

Revisit Personas and Funnel Steps

Before you start churning out content assets, it’s essential to take a step back and go over the fundamentals of your funnel. Begin the process by going over your buyer persona, which according to HubSpot best practices, should include information like:

Demographics including age, income, location, etc.
Communication preferences that indicate how they like to receive information and engage with potential vendors
Goals for both their personal and professional lives
Biggest challenges particularly as it relates to the product or service being marketed

As you (ideally, along with your primary content creators) review this information, remember to spend time considering whether or not anything is outdated or inaccurate. This is a great time to update your personas and make your marketing efforts more effective.

Beyond that, you should also look at each step in your funnel to see how people inside it go from a stranger unaware of your brand’s existence to the conversion action you desire. This process will also unlock a vital source of ideas for content and make it much easier to align each piece with your funnel.

Here’s an example: let’s say visiting a landing page is an important step in the funnel for which you want to create effective content. By drawing on the existing content, language, and media on the landing page, you’ll have a starting point for content you want to map to that funnel segment.

Experiment With Different Channels

One of the double-edged swords of modern digital marketing is the array of different kinds of media we can use to reach an audience. The most common formats are e-mail, social media, blog posts, and videos. Clever marketers can develop an endless variety of themes and formats within just these four channels.

If you haven’t already, you need to work on aligning your different marketing channels with each stage of your funnel. These insights will be key for understanding what type of content to produce for different segments of your audience.

Here’s another concrete example: you typically use video advertisements on social media networks to attract people to your brand and make them aware of your offering. This is a standard way marketers use video content for the top of their funnels.

If you haven’t already, you need to work on aligning your different marketing channels with each stage of your funnel Click To Tweet

But what if, instead of only using video for social media ads, you also incorporated video at the later stages of your funnel? Maybe you publish a video interview with a satisfied client in which they discuss some of the most significant benefits of your offering and why it worked. In this case, you’d use video for your funnel’s middle segment.

It’s impossible to definitively say which combination will work best for your funnel and audience. Remember to measure and track the data so you can compare how each channel works for each segment of your funnel.

Add a Personal Touch

It’s wonderful to understand your sales funnel as a progression of different steps and know what kind of content will work best for prospects at each one. But to maximize your content’s effectiveness, you must find a way to express an understanding of what your target audience is going through.

Take a look at this excerpt from a landing page for Drift, a conversational marketing tool focused on interactions via chatbot and messenger platforms:

From the very first word of the copy, they ask the reader to envision how their work situation could be made better by using Drift. Sure, the message may not be as effective for people who don’t manage a sales team daily. But because the team responsible for marketing Drift has a deep understanding of their target audience, they can add this personal touch that speaks directly to the goals or challenges of their ideal prospect.

It’s vital to incorporate these kinds of highly-specific messages in your content, no matter what stage of the funnel you intend. If you don’t feel confident enough in your audience’s understanding to add these personal touches, revisit the first step in this post to deepen your knowledge.

Solicit Real Feedback

Our final piece of advice for mapping content to different funnel stages is straightforward but not always easy: ask a real person! One of the most common mistakes we see in the prospects and clients we work with is the “bubble effect.” A team of marketers gathers (virtually or in-person) to figure out the needs and challenges of an audience without any input from real people in that audience.

This approach is okay in the earliest stages of your marketing or when resources like time and money are drastically limited. However, you shouldn’t run a content marketing campaign for an extended period without getting input from the target audience. Whether you receive that input from a formal survey, a casual in-person meeting, or a quick video call, it’s critical to integrate it into your content creation efforts as soon as possible.

Final Thoughts on Mapping Content Creation to Your Funnel

Content creation as a strategy for digital marketers probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, the format of that content and how you create it will change. The best-performing content marketers will be the ones who can closely match their content with the specific challenges of their audience – in a time-sensitive fashion, presented via a format that fits their lifestyle.

Are you looking to get some expert insights into how you can do a better job of matching content to different parts of your sales funnel? Click here to fill out a quick questionnaire and see if you might be a fit to work with our team at FunnelEnvy.

By Raj C|2022-08-24T07:12:51-07:00September 5th, 2022|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments

Building Your B2B Marketing Tech Stack

Digital marketing is exponentially more powerful today than the techniques used in the early days of the web. Unfortunately, with its expanded capabilities comes more complexity. There are more tools, techniques, and channels available than ever before and that can make it difficult to choose which software to use in the pursuit of your digital marketing goals.

This article outlines a basic framework for addressing this common B2B marketing issue. While we can’t recommend specific software tools universal for all businesses, the principles outlined here should get you well on your way to selecting your own set of software tools – commonly known as a “tech stack.”

Our Approach to B2B Marketing Tech Stacks

We suggest clients and prospects select two different software tools to be the foundation of their marketing: one customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and one marketing automation tool. A CRM acts as a database of information on your past, present, and future customers as well as a communication log. A marketing automation tool allows you to automate specific marketing tasks across different channels, particularly email and social media.

Why these two specific tools? Here’s the breakdown:

Core Element 1 of 2: CRM

The most basic version of a CRM is a digital business address book that also allows you to take notes. But in the last decade or so, CRM technology has come a long way. Today the decision about CRM is less about having one, and more about choosing the best one to integrate properly with the rest of your tech stack.

Today the decision about CRM is less about having one, and more about choosing the best one to integrate properly with the rest of your tech stack. Click To Tweet

Another reason we like CRMs is their importance for sales and marketing. The CRM tool acts as a “home base” for many sales reps. It’s one of the first things they check when their work begins (along with their email) and houses critical data that helps them be successful. In an optimal CRM situation, not only is this data used to help your sales team, but it can also be fed to the marketing department so they can use it to flesh out changes to buyer personas, campaign strategy, etc.

Consider our next core element regarding marketing data: a marketing automation platform.

Core Element 2 of 2: Automation Platform

While your CRM will probably be the home base for the sales team (or whoever is handling sales responsibilities at your company), your marketing automation platform will be the primary tool used by marketing.

At its most fundamental level, a marketing automation platform does exactly what it sounds like: automates your marketing. Typically, it handles tasks that would be impossible or highly arduous for a person to complete manually, including things like:

Sending out emails to an entire subscriber list or segment of a list
Indicating which campaign made a prospect aware of the company
Scoring leads to determine which ones are most likely to become customers
Gathering user data from email and website interactions to determine which elements of your marketing are most successful
Connecting all the other elements of your marketing (including a CRM) into one consistent resource your team can use

A few of the most common marketing automation tools include:

HubSpot, popular for small and medium-sized businesses and known for simple, intuitive user interfaces
Marketo, an automation software platform owned by Adobe that focuses on tracking user experiences and improving cross-channel engagement
Constant Contact, which focuses on engaging with small business clients who are interested in using email and SMS marketing

There are many different options depending on your budget and the kind of functionality you want. On which specific factors should you aim your focus? Here are a few tips to consider as you compare different marketing automations and CRM tools available for your company:

Your current workflow. The way you currently do things might favor selecting one particular automation tool or another. For example, if you’re already a Salesforce user, you’re probably much more likely to use Pardot instead of a similar tool. It’ll provide the least disruption to your current workflow, which saves money in the long run, even if it means selecting the more expensive option in the short term.
Budget. How much can you afford to spend on a new automation tool? Think about areas where you might be able to save money. HubSpot, for example, offers many different pricing options and bundles across its suite of products and services. By tailoring your purchase in this way, you can save money by eliminating services and features you don’t need.
Installation and setup. Essentially – how long does it take to go from purchase to being able to use the platform fully? While you might view this as a temporary concern, it’s still important. What if your sales and marketing teams cannot function at full capacity for weeks or even months while you are integrating new software into the company’s workflow? Decision-makers must determine if this kind of sacrifice is worth making for an automation or CRM platform.
Service and support. Once things are in place and your company can begin using the software, what happens if there is an issue or something stops working? This factor may not be obvious upfront, but it could be worth investing a little more in a higher-end option that provides better support to users.

Finally, remember that most of the major marketing automation platforms available will have their own CRM tool built-in. While it is possible to use separate tools for CRM and marketing automation, make sure they integrate well or it could create more work than necessary.

A Word on Google Analytics

No matter what kind of marketing automation platform or CRM you use, we also recommend incorporating Google Analytics into your stack. It’s one of the most popular and universally compatible tools around, especially for marketers who rely heavily on website-based interactions to generate leads. Most of the major automation platforms will easily be able to understand and integrate data from Google, which provides another valuable source for insights without complicating your current workflow.

Bringing It All Together

Marketing technology can feel complex, but it doesn’t need to be. The best way to cut through all of the noise and complexity in marketing automation and technology is to focus on your specific needs. Before you compare the various options available to meet your CRM and automation needs, a strong understanding of your target audience and how your business intends to market to them will make the search much easier.

Above all, keep things as simple as possible and as close to your current workflow as possible. Make sure to “close the loop” so that all of the different tools and platforms you use for marketing can work together to form a single, reliable set of data that will inform your strategy for attracting more leads and converting more of them to customers.

Want personalized help trying to figure out which of the many marketing software tools is best for your business? Take this quiz to see how FunnelEnvy can help ensure you’re choosing the digital marketing platforms that empower and improve your business.

By Raj C|2022-05-06T08:44:45-07:00May 16th, 2022|B2B|0 Comments

FunnelEnvy Personalization Without Rules

Dictionary.com defines personalization as:
“to design or tailor to meet an individual’s specifications, needs, or preferences:”

Yet, little about personalization as it’s currently touted in mar-tech is actually personalized to an individual’s needs & preferences. Instead of serving the optimized experiences for each individual, customers are merely getting segmented into audiences based on predefined rules.

Putting visitors into segmented audience groups is not personalization.

While serving one of five eBooks based on industry is likely improvement over a static site, it’s far off from personalized.

At FunnelEnvy, we define this approach to optimization as rules-based personalization. Let’s compare this to FunnelEnvy’s personalization without rules.

FunnelEnvy enables experiences that are personalized without rules.

Instead of having pre-defined audiences, FunnelEnvy evaluates each visitor and interaction on a 1:1 basis to determine optimized experiences. Our AI based platform is continuously gathering data and self-improving to ensure every touch is optimized for revenue.

The optimized experience that’s served is often completely different than what a rules-based approach, that is void of any relevant customer context, would serve. The reality is that while marketers can do their best to match an audience to an experience, an AI approach that’s not limited by audiences will almost always outperform a human.

Example to illustrate the between rules-based personalization and FunnelEnvy.

Let’s say you own a Fin-tech company that currently has two eBooks to offer potential customers:

A: ‘10 tips for reducing costs’
B: ‘How to maximize your website for growth’

Now let’s say there are three people that visit your website.

Steve: Works at 10 person chatbot startup
John: Works at 2000 person regional clothing company
Tom: Works at 10000 person multinational shipping company

How Rules-Based Personalization handles the visitors:

With a rules-based approach, you decide to create two predefined audiences. You think that companies under 1,000 employees should see one experience, while those above 1,000 should see another.

With the two segments defined:
Steve would see the eBook “10 tips for reducing costs”
John and Tom would see “How to maximize your website for growth”

After running this experiment you find:
Steve – Bought your product.
Tom – Bought your product.
John – Did Not buy your product.

How FunnelEnvy Personalization handles the visitors:

FunnelEnvy analyzes many traits about the three visitors including:
Evaluating historical data of similar companies to those of Tom, John, and Steve
Looking at Salesforce data to look how other individuals in similar funnel position
Evaluating the Behavior of the three individuals on your website.
Much more…

After analyzing all this available data in real time, FunnelEnvy decides that:
Steve would see the eBook “10 tips for reducing costs”
John and Tom would see “How to maximize your website for growth”

There is no predefined audience based on company size, as the AI determines simply picks the experience that will most likely lead to revenue.

After running this experiment you find:
Steve – Bought your product.
Tom – Bought your product.
John – Bought your product.

As we can see from this example, having a fluid system that can bring in data and evaluate optimized experiences on a 1:1 basis outperforms a predefined and stagnant audience approach. If you are serious about optimizing your website for revenue, consider the advantages of FunnelEnvy’s AI-based approach vs a rules-based one.

By Arun Sivashankaran|2018-09-28T15:47:21-07:00April 20th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

The Reason Your B2B Website is No Longer Effective

The 1907 Quakers from the University of Pennsylvania were the juggernauts of college football. Heading into a home field matchup with the Carlisle Indians they had not only won, but dominated their previous seven games by a combined score of 189-10.

Their October home game on Franklin field against Carlisle wasn’t expected to be much different. Although the Indians were also undefeated, they were a group of unheralded, undersized players that the 22,800 fans in attendance didn’t give much of a chance against their mighty Quakers.

So what happened? Carlisle demolished Penn 26-6. The most notable play of the game was fullback Pete Hauer’s 40 yard perfect spiral pass that sports historians would later call one of the “three or four signal moments in the evolution of football” and “the sporting equivalent of the Wright brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk.”

These historians attribute Carlisle’s stunning upset that Saturday to Carlisle coach Pop Warner’s exploitation of a rule change that was adopted a couple of years earlier. In order to curb the surging violence in football schools adopted a number of rules changes, most notably legalizing the forward pass.

Warner decisively capitalized on this rule change, confusing the Quakers with long passes and new formations. Penn was playing by the old rules, and caught completely unprepared for the new era of football that they had the misfortune of writing into history that day.

(more…)

By Arun Sivashankaran|2018-10-20T21:47:07-07:00March 7th, 2018|Uncategorized, The Funnel, Strategy, SaaS, B2B|0 Comments

If you care about B2B conversions, stop producing content

Houston, we have a problem.

As enterprise focused B2B marketers, we have a problem.

We all agree that we want to grow traffic to our website, turn the traffic into leads and convert the leads into customers.

Yet, we have all blindly trusted the theory that, producing more content, showing product options, displaying more testimonials, and creating more case studies will get you a bigger pipeline.

Let us be the first to refute this claim: more is not better.

In fact, with every additional piece of content or white paper you are killing pipeline. Why, might ask?

Because you are simply overwhelming your customers.

Explanation please!?

To illustrate this point, let’s talk about Cognitive Load.

Cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.

When we put irrelevant, unnecessary and distracting information in front of people, we fill up that working memory. The result is a decreased ability to absorb information, learn and ultimately make decisions.

While it may seem that having multiple content options on your website increases the likelihood that you will connect with your visitor, it actually has the opposite effect.

When customers are given too many content options you are forcing them to make decisions that take up their mental resources, derailing your chance at a direct path to purchasing.

Can someone say cognitive overload?!

Think about it this way: the most important factor in the design of a website is making it easier for customer to find what they want. Customers crave simple and easy navigation over anything else in regard to design.

Most important factors in the design of a website

If your website presents multiple decisions for the user, you filled with decisions for users to make, you are not making it easy for them to find what they want!

Let’s break it down.

Let’s take a look at some examples unintentionally cognitive overload.

Content.

As marketers, we are producing too much content that is both expensive and unnecessary.

In reality, only a small portion of your content is necessary to help the customer move down the purchase funnel and it is our job as marketers to present that one (perfect) piece of content. Sadly, we are letting our customers down by allowing them to read irrelevant content and thus, introducing cognitive load.

Produce more content

Calls to action.

While letting visitors chose from multiple CTA’s may seem like a great way to help customers find what they want, it actually leads them to confusion. Rather, you should be putting them on a specific path that you have identified as most effective for conversions.

Multiple calls to action

Product options.

If you’re selling an enterprise focused product, it is likely that your website is showcasing all of the products and services that you offer. Again, this overwhelms customers.

We should know about our customers well enough so that we are only showing the products that we believe (based on research) they are likely to buy! Don’t give them fifty options and hope their first selection is the one best suited for them.

Analytic Solution

Case studies.

A customer only works in one industry; do not show them case studies from other industries where the use cases might be completely different. This content is irrelevant, distracting and increases cognitive load.

All case studies

Industry solutions.

We are asking customers to unnecessarily identify themselves. Having to go through a selection process, like the example below, does not inspire confidence that the software is well suited for a visitor’s industry.

Industry Solutions

Pricing options.

A multitude of pricing options is a perfect example of cognitive overload. We are overwhelming our customers with pricing options to the point where they don’t know which option to choose.

Target enterprise accounts shouldn’t see basic pricing tiers. Similarly, SMB’s shouldn’t see enterprise offerings. This substandard experience increases friction and reduces conversion rates!

pricing options

It is time to stop – your are overwhelming your Customers.

So, what’s the solution then? How do we make sure customers aren’t overwhelmed with cognitive overload?

It’s simple: reduce content and only show the most relevant information.

Calls to Action

Keeping this in mind, what if instead of showing everything to all of our visitors, we only showed the most relevant and effective calls to action?

Logos & Testimonials

What if we show the logos and testimonials that were most relevant to customer needs or highlighted the testimonials that most reflected their pain points?

Pricing Plans

What if we focused on and only showed the pricing that was going to be relevant for the given account and the features of those plans that were going to meet their needs?

Customer Experience

What if we only showed customers relevant experiences based on what we knew about them?

Doing things right

Doing this right has real and meaningful implications. 94% of buyers in a Demand Gen survey choose the winning vendor because that company demonstrated a stronger knowledge of their needs.

In an Accenture survey, half of B2B customers already expect improved personalized product or service recommendations. In fact, 65% of business buyers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize communications to their business.

The takeaways.

The more options you give customers, the more cognitive load you put on them. The result is a filled-up working memory and hindered ability to make decisions toward purchasing a product.

Instead of producing more content, focus on showing the single experience that will resonate most with your customers!

By Michelle Morrison|2018-10-01T09:48:35-07:00December 11th, 2017|Conversion Rate Optimization, Digital Marketing, B2B|0 Comments

4 Tips for an Effective B2B Social Media Campaign

B2B marketing is undergoing huge changes.

Thanks to the developments in marketing technology B2B strategies have had to adapt to evolving purchaser desires. The traditional approach to B2B marketing is, if we’re being honest, dry and dull. It’s always aimed at the professional, who apparently is a very boring person.

There seems to be an unwritten rule in traditional B2B that dictates the message to every person needs be delivered with professional courtesy that ultimately robs it of anything resembling personality.

But the times, they are a-changing. What you’ve got to remember is, while your primary B2B prospects are being approached in their professional capacity, they’re still a consumer. And thanks to the popularisation of channels including social media these B2B buyers expect a ‘consumer-like’ experience to the marketing materials they receive.

It’s something the B2B world is catching on to. If you take a look at the developing budgetary trends, you’ll see that while marketing campaign budgets are set to rise by 5% over the next year, those for digital marketing are projected to increase three times as fast.

That budget is largely going to be funneled into your content marketing strategy; the production of blog posts, white papers, eBooks, etc. However, the shift in buyer expectations has an increasing number of business recognizing the importance of social media content.

(more…)

By Peter Boyle|2016-03-01T10:28:54-08:00March 1st, 2016|B2B|1 Comment

The New World of B2B Marketing: What It Means for You

It’s easy to see B2B and B2C marketing as completely different animals.

After all, that’s how their customers have behaved over the years.

The common thinking: it’s easier to sway B2C customers with media, ads, and special offers. They care about brands, but most of the time, switching between them is not a big deal if they’re not happy with their experience.

B2B customers, on the other hand, do extensive research. They care about the technical specs of your product. If they decide to buy, it’s often done through a formal procurement process. Once they become your customer, they tend to stick with you for a longer time because switching to a different provider can disrupt their workflow.

This explains why B2B has moved slower than B2C sales in responding to changing technologies, trends, and customer preferences…

However, continuing along that slower path today leads to some serious missed opportunities.

Traditional B2B strategies – from cold calling and direct mail to relying on word-of-mouth referrals – still have their place and can be effective. But you can supercharge your sales if you’re willing to integrate a few new concepts to help you adjust to today’s rapidly-changing B2B environment.

(more…)

By Corey Pemberton|2016-01-06T12:57:51-08:00January 14th, 2016|Digital Marketing|3 Comments

Previous 123 Next

Home

Resources

follow us on