Driving sales using Modern Marketing techniques

Changing the Rules in Business Services Marketing

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

1. Overview and Introduction

1.1. Overview

1.2. The Business Services Landscape

2. Modern Marketing

2.1. What is Modern Marketing?

2.2. Modern Marketing Fundamentals

2.2.1. The Facts

2.2.2. The Buyer Journey

2.2.3. The Sales Funnel – for Marketers 101

2.2.4. Personas and their Impact in Business Services

2.2.5. Sales and Marketing Alignment – why it matters in B2BS Marketing

3. Key Pillars for Success

3.1. Inbound Marketing

3.2. Content

3.3. Technology

4. Creating Perpetual Demand

Contents

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IntroductionUnderstanding your landscape and why Modern Marketing matters

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

Modern buyers have changed, evolved and outpaced the traditional B2B marketer. Fuelled by technology in this digital age their access to information on services, solutions, pricing, reviews, complaints, results and everything in between has completely transformed the traditional relationship between the buyer and ‘seller’.

Why should I care? In this new paradigm the web, self-education and knowledge enable the modern buyer to set their own, personal agenda, create their own digital experience and ultimately dictate their own buying journey – leaving traditional B2B marketers struggling to achieve results and revenue through traditional, tactical means.

As buyers evolve their own multi-channel journey, the traditional marketing landscape becomes increasingly fragmented – challenging the CMO’s ability to demonstrate, track and attribute value from the marketing function as a whole. This inability to track, report and provide demonstrable value is crucial as the focus of the CMO shifts from brand awareness and ‘lead generation’ to meeting revenue targets1 and the progressive CMO seeks to move into the CEO seat.

The increasing sophistication and effect of the modern buyer is not confined to any one sector and although shorter B2B buying cycles have perhaps felt the ‘crunch’ earlier than most, the Business Service (B2BS) sector is not immune to the impact that modern marketing has on long-term business revenues.

In fact the B2BS sector by its diverse nature, multiplicity of influencers, power of relationships and inherent specialist knowledge has always needed to harness the power of multiple channels, voices, methods and tactics to achieve success. In this world of modern buyers, where information exists everywhere, it’s not enough to simply shout louder, pump out more content or print more brochures. To really achieve success in the new world, it’s time for a step change. Cue the rise of the modern marketer.

In this guide we’ll explore how and more importantly why Business Service marketers should adopt Modern Marketing.

Overview

1. www.heidrick.com/~/media/Publications%20and%20Reports/The-Evolved-CMO-in-2014.pdf

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

Business Services (BS) is a complex beast. However you slice the data there’s no definitive categorisation of what’s in and what’s out – everything from facilities to tax, engineering to property, computing to litigation. While the subsectors are very different in nature they do share commonality in their service models, intermediate nature and delivery of specialist expertise, knowledge or ability.

In the UK, in 2014 alone B2BS represented an economic contribution of £142 Billion and made up almost a quarter of the top 1000 fastest growing businesses. More importantly they represent a multinational opportunity for growth with the global estimated value of B2BS recognised at £5.2 Trillion1.

With a growth trend predicted by both Deloitte and the BSA there is clearly scope for expansion within the B2BS sector and opportunities for Business Service marketers to utilise Modern Marketing to grow their businesses and their own careers. Yet pressures from rising costs and tighter margins coupled with competition from both global providers and smaller, more agile firms signifies a need for innovation. To survive and thrive and marketing must play a fundamental part in this innovation.

Moreover the BSA suggest that providers need to consider, understand and focus on technology based innovation as a core strategy predicting these that do will succeed in the long term.

For B2B marketers, this presents a very real opportunity to re-align a Modern Marketing function with core business objectives and future growth potential. Implementing Modern Marketing in traditionally conservative sectors can be a challenging internal ‘sell’ but with a complex, multi-stakeholder buyer journey and disparate buying patterns, BS marketers have little choice but to innovate. Traditional methods are quickly becoming ineffective and marketers must look at evolving their team and methods for continued growth.

1. www.heidrick.com/~/media/Publications%20and%20Reports/The-Evolved-CMO-in-2014.pdf

2. www.lloydsbankcommercial.com/Business-Services-Calculating-the-market-size/

3. www.bsa-org.com/uploads/publication/file/163/deloitte-uk-business-services-outolook-2015.pdf

The Business Service Landscape

“ In order to succeed (BS) providers should focus on strategies relating to; the use of software enabled services through technology-led innovations 2”

“ Service providers that focus on this in the next year will outperform the competition in the long-term 3”

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Modern MarketingWhat it is and why it matters

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

If there was a neat, tidy definition of Modern Marketing with a simple, cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to execution the world would be a simpler place. Much like the unique nature of an individual buyer journey, Modern Marketing will look very different in a large accounting practice to a business finance firm and equally different again in facilities to consulting.

Modern Marketing, in response to our modern buyer is a sophisticated mix of best-in-class structured methodologies, innovative technology, valuable content, integrated digital ecosystems fully aligned sales and marketing processes. It gives full visibility across the whole prospect spectrum, complete understanding of the buyer pains – all wrapped and delivered, tracked and optimised with pin point precision across the entire buyer journey. Simple – oh and with a smaller budget than last year!

In reality Modern Marketing is not definitive, rather a framework to guide, build and deliver results in an ever evolving environment. Centred around the buyer rather than the seller (you) Modern Marketing shifts the focus from push selling, batch/blast tactics and disruptive approaches in favour of more natural, personalised, preference led engagement.

The modern marketer, which includes the modern salesperson recognises the need to understand the buyer in more detail, micro and macro, than ever before to help guide them throughout their micro-journey. In parallel using insight from data, behaviour and attribution to build macro journies that map seamlessly across other prospects, using marketing technology to deliver a bespoke journey without bespoke costs!

The results are clear to see with 55% of modern marketers seeing increased sales (not just clicks or responses) as a result of Modern Marketing techniques.4

4. www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/content/documents/whitepapers/forrester-why-modern-marketer-us-emea-wp-oracle.pdf

What is Modern Marketing?

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

Every buyer said each journey is unique but every modern marketer needs some fundamentals to work with.

In this section we’ll address:

Modern Marketing fundamentals

Facts and Figures

The Buying Journey

Persona’s and their impact

in Business Services

Marketing and Sales Alignment – why it matters in

Modern Marketing

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

B2B buyers are 67% through the buying cycle before interacting with potential suppliers.

89% of B2B5 researchers use the web for information.

94% of B2B buyer journeys start online.

On average B2B prospects will conduct 12 searches prior to visiting a specific brand site.6

The average person spends 8 hours per day on media devices – these are your potential buyers.

44% of modern marketers achieved revenue growth of 10%+ above plan.7

81% of non C-suite personnel are directly involved in purchase decisions.

Wherever you look there’s a new statistic, promoting a new technology, platform or ad campaign. While overall statistics help position Modern Marketing and show the changing behaviour of prospects it’s important to keep this in the context of the Business Services buyer.

The level of adoption, volume of searches and prospect behaviour in Business Services will differ widely from buyer to buyer, or persona types, finance to procurement, HR Director to MD and again depending on your BS proposition – there is no substitute for real world data and facts relative to your business and your buyer journey.

5. www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-changing-face-b2b-marketing.html

6. www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-changing-face-b2b-marketing.html

7. www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/content/documents/whitepapers/forrester-why-modern-marketer-us-emea-wp-oracle.pdf

The Facts

20% of ‘leads’ that approach you are not ready to buy.

90% of business buyers say that when they’re ready to buy they will find you.

54% of CMOs cite hitting business revenue targets as their most important business driver.

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

In order to embrace the shift and reap the rewards from Modern Marketing we must address the new pathways that our buyers are carving out for themselves through their buyer journey. Understanding the buyer journey helps the modern marketer to:

n Generate more opportunities by attracting prospects with inbound and content strategies

n Convert opportunities into sales by using marketing automation to deliver personalised, engaging content

n Retain customers and increase their value by using insight and targeted digital marketing to up- and cross-sell

The information (and power) that once sat with the Business Service sales and marketing team is now freely available to your prospective buyer – so the direction and pace of their journey will be in their hands. As a result the role of the Modern Marketer is not to force messages onto reluctant ‘buyers’, but to facilitate engagement with prospects at the outset of their journey and keep them engaged throughout

the lifecycle. So unless you plan to shut up shop altogether, the days of ‘hand off to sales, job done’ are over.

Fundamentally the buyer’s journey helps the Modern Marketer, sales team and enterprise achieve more, so understanding this journey and working for the prospect at each stage is critical to success.

Within Business Services, especially within contractual sales cycles this journey won’t be linear or one dimensional and will typically encompass multiple stakeholder personas with multiple layers of influence so it’s critical to keep the journey at the heart of your Modern Marketing. Next we’ll look at an ‘ideal’ sales funnel, but from a modern marketers perspective.

The Buyer Journey

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The Sales Funnel – for Marketers 101

ENHANCE CONVERSIONS

Form conversions

RemarketingDrive repeat visit to website around relevent subject area through banners and social messaging

Dynamic contentPersonalised web content based on each individual visitor’s data

Content gatingConverting unknown visitors to known, to enable future nurturing

REACH NEW BUYERS(Above the funnel)

GET INITIAL ENGAGEMENT(Top of funnel)

ACCELERATE THROUGH BUYER JOURNEY(Middle of funnel)

GENERATE SALES OPPORTUNITIES

(Bottom of funnel)

Paid searchPaid ads to appear at the top of search results

SEOHelp buyers find you through search engines

Paid socialAds and updates on social segmented on audience data

ProgrammaticData driven advertising on display networks and social channels

BlogThought leadership articles results

PREditorial content providing thought leadership in journals or industry websites

AdvertisingPaid for adverts in journals or on industry websites

Email outboundBroadcast emails to existing contacts

Email nurtureTriggered emails based on previous behaviour of buyers

RemarketingTriggered ad banners on social messages based on previous buyer behaviour

SocialEngage and nurture buyers on social platforms

Reporting & AnalyticsInsight and performance on activity marketing

STRATEGIC DEFINITION

Planning your go to market

Content mappingUnderstand gaps in your content to deliver buyer journey to target persona

HELP SALES CLOSE DOWN(Sales enablement)

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Traditional marketing would teach us all to segment by job title, pat ourselves on the back and sit back while the sales roll in. But that is no longer the case.

In Business Services where mission critical functions are under consideration and external support or outsourcing is on the agenda we need a more sophisticated understanding of the stakeholder, decision maker and influencer landscape. We need to know less about their exact title and more about their buying persona.

Buying persona’s move away from the title based approach of old and allow the modern marketer to engage earlier in the buying cycle by focusing on the problems and challenges faced by persona type.

Remember that buyers are in control of their own journey and are most likely to start researching their own challenges online. So by understanding what makes their life difficult, keeps them awake at night,

stops them getting that promotion, the modern marketer can strategically frame their messaging to solve these problems. In Business Services where the buying cycles are extended and decisions are often committee-based it’s imperative that messaging is toned, specific and personal by persona type.

Adopting a persona led approach concentrates on first building a picture of each persona then developing specific messaging to solve their pains, support their objectives and address their objections.

Building these into their buyer journey and allowing buyers to consume your messaging in their preferred method elevates your marketing above the ‘shout louder’ brigade – cutting through the noise for better results.

Get started with personas, download our persona cheatsheet Click here

Personas and their Impact in Business Services

To engage with buyers we need to provide valuable content. If the audience is broad – a persona approach allows us to efficiently group messages for effective communications.

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Building a picture of the Business Services Buyer Background Set out clear and simple details about your ideal customer and their business. Who are they?

Where are they? How do they operate?

Routine and responsibilitiesThink about the persona’s daily routine? This isn’t about their ‘job function’. Think about what they do from day to day. For example, how do they plan their work? How do they fi t in product sourcing? Are they responsible for specifying products for the job?

Reference and researchWhere does this persona fi nd out about new products or services? Is it industry journals, websites – on a computer or via mobile, or peer groups? At the trade counter or events and exhibitions? Understand this and you’ll know where to fi nd them when you create communications.

Role in purchase processHow does this persona infl uence the decision making process? Are they the main decision maker? Are they consulted or just informed? This will help you focus your budget and build a picture about where they fi t in the buying cycle.

Quote Bring your persona to life with an actual quote – ideally gathered at an interview with your customer, prospects or via the sales team.

Message DevelopmentChallenges and pain points What keeps this persona up at night? What are their challenges? What makes their life diffi cult?

Once you understand this you can make your messages focused and relevant.

Priorities and drivers What is important to them? What is their key focus? What is going to make them specify your product or change from their habitual product?

Preferred channelHow does this persona consume content and on what device? Do they like short content such as video, images and infographics? Or do they prefer more detailed information like guides, whitepapers and technical information?

Objections What might change the customer’s mind during the sales process? Could your product be switched if it’s an open specifi cation? How can you counter this?

Key messages What messaging speaks directly to this persona. How does the above information feed into this? Think ahead about how these messages might roll out through the buyer journey.

Business Services Persona Development Cheatsheet

Want to fi nd out more about Demand Generation? Looking for practical, actionable steps to make a real change in your organisation? CLICK HERE to fi nd out more.

In the world of Business Services where customers engage, through numerous channels, understanding buyers and infl uencers is vital. You need to understand their challenges and understand how and where to provide the right content at the right time – to ensure brand selection. So why create personas?• To engage with buyers, and/or infl uencers at the early stage of their buying cycle you need to address pain points and not just push products. Help solve their short-term problems and they will value that in the future

• Because your audience is broad, a persona approach helps you to target messages around their needs without individual content and communications for each job title/function• With more of your buyers, and infl uencers using the internet to search for solutions you need to attract them by making sure messaging is

relevant to their challenges

So where do you start? This matrix will help you build each persona. You can then use it to develop communications relevant to their buyer journey.

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For as long as sales and marketing have existed the debate has raged over who owns what and where the responsibility lies for which part of the funnel – does marketing generate leads and sales close these sales?

It’s about time that the feud was over – for growth’s sake! According to Sirius Decisions, companies that have aligned sales and marketing achieve 19% more growth than their unaligned counterparts.

Alignment is not however just about making friends and attending the same meetings, nor is it about either winning or losing. Alignment is an execution strategy to achieve a shared vision – Modern Marketing encompasses and needs sales like a car needs wheels or a plane needs wings – it does not work in isolation. For true sales and marketing leaders, it’s a recognition that without common goals and a clear implementation of practical measures neither sales nor marketing can achieve success.

In the 2014 State of the Enterprise B2B Demand Generation report8 100% of respondents claimed a desire to align their sales and marketing departments with KPIs and mismanagement of leads as core issues for many organisations.

Within Business Services the impact of misalignment and lost opportunities is immeasurable and amplified by sector driven team ‘silos’. With complexities in relationships and historical experiences to overcome there is no quick fix solution in BS.

Setting the vision together and aligning the execution as a Modern Marketing team will not only recalibrate the internal agenda but ensure you’re collectively competing with external challenges not fighting internal battles.

8. www.lbdga.com/media/13030/30065-state-of-enterprise-b2b-guide-aw_rgb-v4-int-24-07-14.pdf

Sales and Marketing Alignment – why it matters in B2BS Marketing

Marketing

Sales

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Key Pillars for SuccessThe key Modern Marketing techniques for Demand Generation

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

In our latest State of the Enterprise – B2B Demand Generation report only 4% of respondents were happy with the performance of their Demand Generation activity. As revenue and profit targets9 move front and centre of our world it’s time to move away from the campaign driven reactive batch and blast approach and focus on true Demand Generation in Modern Marketing.

Demand Generation at a Glance

Demand Generation for a modern marketer encapsulates a wealth of tactics, techniques and disciplines that grow revenues by attracting, engaging and converting buyers throughout their journey from awareness, into consideration and finally into decision.

To really drive and increase revenues though the modern marketer needs three core Demand Generation pillars:

– Inbound Marketing

– Content Marketing

– Marketing Technology

From first stage awareness, blogging, social or paid search to align yourself with their challenges into on page communications with striking creative and content that not only really matters to your buyers and keeps them coming back but more importantly has them sharing more detail, more buying signals and more ‘hand-raising’ digital behaviour.

Demand Generation as a Modern Marketing methodology combines tactics, software, channels, themes and data with results – transforming them into an ‘always on’ journey. Using behavioural data insight and technology to understand the prospect’s digital body language, driving them into your environment and nurturing them one by one towards that all important sale. Remember 9/10 buyers say when they’re ready to buy they’ll find you – Modern Marketing’s role is to facilitate this journey.

At various levels of maturity we will all be using some of these building blocks – but with modern marketers 91% more likely to exceed plan by 10% or more it’s critical that Inbound, content and technology work together to drive results.10

9. www.heidrick.com/~/media/Publications%20and%20Reports/The-Evolved-CMO-in-2014.pdf

10. www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/content/documents/whitepapers/forrester-why-modern-marketer-us-emea-wp-oracle.pdf

Key Pillars for Success

InboundMarketing

$MarketingTechnology

ContentMarketingA

ttraction

Insight Nurture

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Inbound – as the name suggests – is the process of attracting ‘buyers’ into your digital world, (social, web, community) using a variety of tools and techniques to convert them from ‘unknown’ into ‘known’.

Unlike traditional push methods, including direct mail and email, inbound isn’t a one hit wonder, more a sophisticated response to the way that buyers buy. It’s a strategic approach to truly targeting your audience through the most intimate of channels. Inbound leads are 5x more likely to convert to sales11 than their outbound counterparts but for Business Services, where our sales cycles are long and often protracted, inbound is only part of the success story.

Buyers all have a need for information, assets and better ways to achieve more. And 93% of them will start this search for information online. Getting the attention of these potential buyers is no simple feat. A well-structured optimised digital infrastructure will help enable your performance but let’s face it, a CFO with a gaping budget hole won’t be looking for which CMS you’ve invested in and a facilities director with a workforce problem doesn’t care if your blog traffic can’t be tracked – in fact neither mean much to either – you may as well be invisible.

Inbound Marketing

11. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-demand-generation-faqs-ht

Inbound

Unknown

Known

Engaged

Sale

Post-salenurture

Growth

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The ‘invisibility Challenge’ – It’s not all about you

As marketers, we strive to own this online space by, yes you’ve guessed it – building a new website, optimising for search and pumping budget into PPC. Why? Well – a new website and PPC results are tangible evidence that we’ve invested in something ‘real’. The truth is that your prospects, buyers and influencers conduct an average of 12 searches12 before they even get to a branded site, let alone yours!

The Demand Generation gap (large or otherwise) in not reaching these early stage prospects can be devastating for modern marketers, and the true cost of losing actual traffic volume and alignment mindshare with buyer is impossible to quantify. What can be seen very clearly in comparison is that marketers cite social and SEO as both the top performing tactics and top two lead sources.

Inbound as part of a whole Demand Generation strategy helps the modern marketer overcome common challenges including:

Increasing awareness

Driving more opportunities

Accelerating the buyer journey

Specific organisation and persona targeting

To achieve these core benefits within the Business Service environment you’ll need to evaluate and analyse the performance of your inbound streams – corporate and campaign based – across SEO, social and non-native platforms for their effectiveness. Find out where they are performing and where they’re not? Is there a better, most cost effective way of driving this traffic? For example, if your paid social activity is not translating to better organic results, what’s not working?

Back to our pillars – inbound does not exist in isolation – why would an HR Director come back to your site if your content doesn’t give them any value? How do you know what they were interested in and what brought them to you if your analytics can’t track and retarget? Worse still if your first stage content is only available on your website how will they know to visit you at all?

Driving inbound performance needs good, relevant content sensitively aligned to your buyer’s stages to fuel success. Technology like Marketing Automation can then deliver content at the right time, through the right channel.

12. www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-changing-face-b2b-marketing.html

cont.

To find out more about Inbound Marketing, download our 101 Guide

01

02

03

04

I need

to drive

awarenessSales

want better

opportunities

I need to

see

movements

in key accountsI need to

shorten the

sales cycle

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What can Content do?

Content is at the heart of driving audience engagement, interaction and leads. It is the medium through which we mix audience needs with supplier solutions to present value-added information for prospects and customers.

Simply put, content is your opportunity to connect with your buyers and give them the opportunity to connect with you. Good content breaks down the barriers between unknown and known and helps buyers solve the problems they face every day.

All Content is Content, Right?

Well yes, a brochure, web text, email, social post all content is technically content but content for content’s sake makes no impact in today’s overcrowded environment. We’re all bombarded daily with so many emails, telemarketers, ill-placed web banners and ‘me me me’ press releases that we ignore – muting everything that could be beneficial in the process.

For modern marketers in Business Services this ‘mute button’ not only prevents your messages getting through but actively reduces any ROI from disruptive tactics like email and tele-activity, especially in isolation. As the volumes of tactical activity grow in response, so too does our buyer’s defence mechanism against them – effectively creating a cycle where the harder you push the wider the gap between you and the buyer becomes.

Content v Content Marketing

The evolution of the modern buyer journey and ability of potential prospects to educate themselves faster and more autonomously than ever before doesn’t mean the death of content and it doesn’t mean that you switch off your email platform and stop creating, but it does signal the rise of content marketing.

Content marketing is defined by The Content Marketing Institute as, ‘a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.13

13. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/12/uk-2015-content-marketing-research/

Content

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This definition of content marketing is important to Business Services marketers that are often asked to create tactical content without any ‘profitable customer action’ the result? Disruptive ‘one off’ activity without ROI attribution. For the ambitious, progressive, modern marketer this lack of focus on good content actively hampers results and by proxy the reputation and perceived value of the marketing function.

Breaking the Cycle

For content to form a crucial pillar in Demand Generation it needs to break away from the traditional batch and blast or job mentality and start focusing on the buyer, their journey and how your business can help them solve their challenges, professionally and personally.

Shifting the focus away from the functions, features and benefits your business delivers almost seems counter-intuitive. For the Business Service sector where solutions are built around the needs of specific prospect challenges how do you know what your buyers need and hence what message your content needs to deliver? 24/7 support, a global team, lower fixed costs or any other benefit/feature combo is lost on your audience behind the ‘mute wall’ because you

haven’t got to the root of what their persona needs. Combine this with a multi-stakeholder, multi-persona environment and the power of the CFO/MD/facilities personal relationships and you’ve got a serious challenge.

Content marketing gives the modern marketer a framework and tool box to purposefully cut through the noise and deliver better, more attributable returns by aligning content with buyer personas and their stage in the buying journey.

For more insight on Business Services Buyers, check out our Buyer Journey Cheatsheet

cont.

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So back to our buyer journey then. What does your persona need to achieve? What do they care about in this stage of their journey? How do you know what type of content to share and when? And how do you deliver it?

The Hidden Depths of Content Marketing

Modern marketers have multiple goals to achieve with content marketing and unsurprisingly while nurture and engagement top the list they have close competition from lead generation and brand awareness.14

Implementing a content marketing strategy for Business Services that factors in all of these goals needs to consider the; What (image, format, style, tone, length); Where (social, web, blog, banner) and How (outbound, PPC, event, SEO, placement) questions as well as core messaging.

Layering What, Where and How onto customer centric, buyer focused messaging facilitates the modern buyer journey allowing your buyers to find the information they need in a format that they want to consume. In the Business Service world where the FM persona is most likely to be on-site, the MD is fighting daily fires and the procurement lead is busy drafting the next RFP, it’s no wonder they’ve pressed mute on disruptive outbound marketing. That’s why making your content marketing relevant, consumable and accessible ensures you become an ally in their goals – and ultimately partners in their business.

14. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/12/uk-2015-content-marketing-research/

5 Tips to help cut through the noise:

1. Focus on them, not you - Build out your persona based on their

needs – not your solutions.

2. Create peers – show your buyers you understand their issues and

are there to help them.

3. Give value – become a valuable source of information that helps

the buyer achieve more.

4. Align messages to their buying stage – not where you want them to

be and give them the tools to facilitate their relationship with you.

5. Be relevant – with both information and format. Understand how

your buyers consume information at each stage and build your

content in the format that your buyer needs. Video, infographics,

blogs all provide bite-sized opportunities for your buyers to

engage with you.

cont.

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The Business Service Association is clear that the use of software enabled services through technology-led innovations15 will outperform in the long term. Modern marketers implementing Demand Generation in other sectors like technology are already seeing the revenue benefits of ‘technology led innovation’ within marketing. So just what does BS need to make their technology the cornerstone of exceptional Demand Generation?

Automate!

Throughout this guide we’ve been discussing your personas, the buyer journey, creating great content that speaks to their needs through their mediums at their pace – which is all theory, best practice and methodology. In reality doing this for one potential buyer is challenging enough, amplified by the size of your audience is an insurmountable task – without automation.

84% of top performing companies are already using Marketing Automation and are reporting 53% higher sales as well as fundamental benefits – according to one Business Service provider.

15. http://www.bsa-org.com/uploads/publication/file/163/deloitte-uk-business-services-outolook-2015.pdf

16. http://uk.marketo.com/customers/graydon-holdings/

Technology

“It’s is like being given a pair of digital hands to run

marketing campaigns. It is a powerful and popular

Marketing Automation solution which is steadily

transforming our sales effectiveness.”16

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Just like the digital world is transforming the buyer journey, so too are modern marketers responding to the change of landscape with increasingly effective Demand Generation methodologies.

Marketing Automation in Action

Done well a good Marketing Automation strategy will enable you to:

1) Understand your buyer’s behaviour

a. Allowing you to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

b. Using insight to replicate and amplify success.

2) Let them move through the buyer journey at their own pace

a. Using nurture streams and strategies to stay engaged and relevant throughout the buyer journey.

3) Deliver what your buyer wants – without the need for manual interaction

a. Making your budget work harder for you by creating streams that automatically trigger.

b. Reducing the need for bespoke content every time by mapping groups of behaviour.

4) Deliver increased value from opportunities

a. Tracking behaviour throughout the buyer journey allows modern marketers to make smarter decisions about what to/not to move into sales engagement.

5) Grow existing customers

a. Mapping needs and challenges to existing customer behaviour to identify and nurture up- and cross-selling opportunities.

Download The Blueprint for Demand Generation

Implementing this technology doesn’t come without its own set of challenges – like any technology it is only as effective as we make it so just ‘having’ or just ‘implementing’ won’t help you solve the business service tangle. To be effective Marketing Automation needs a plan of attack and the support of content and inbound to fuel the Demand Generation engine.

cont.

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Creating Perpetual DemandGenerating additional leads at low incremental cost

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

Generating perpetual demand is the nirvana for all modern marketers, business services or otherwise. As such, you can’t expect to achieve it simply by putting a Marketing Automation package and a couple of nurture streams in place.

Building a complete funnel approach and fully integrating technology, content and inbound needs a clear vision, strategy and implementation plan to deliver clear financial results and fulfil the role of the marketing function in leading business growth.

So what’s next? Modern Marketing isn’t the end of the story but the start of a progressive shift in the way in which we interact with each other – buyer to seller, community to audience, marketing to sales.

Big data, IoT, endemic marketing, and mobile marketing drive irreversible changes in the marketing landscape, happening at such a rapid pace that innovation is the only option. So in a world where change is constant, how can demand become perpetual? How do you achieve it, and then sustain it?

Towards Perpetual Demand

Let’s be clear, perpetual demand is not about building a one-size-fits-all machine that never needs improvement – perpetual demand is about understanding and addressing the pains, needs and challenges your buyers face and systematically building your marketing operations around it.

Modern marketers who want to accelerate Demand Generation into true perpetual demand recognise that today’s buyers want ‘always on, every channel, content rich’ experience with their partners (you!) and use all three pillars (inbound, technology and content) to facilitate every buyer journey, ensuring no lead is left behind.

Creating Perpetual Demand

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

They audit, assess, identify and plan strategically with trusted advisors, internal and external on how best to enable their buyer journey and most importantly objectively look for constant improvements across response, efficiency and results.cont.

INBOUNDInbound tactics are

used to draw targets to value-added offers on Web properties.

1

INBOUNDl SEO/SEMl Sociall Content

syndicationl Organic

WEBSITEThe conversion-

optimised Website drives responses.

2PRE-MQL NURTURE

Responses by contacts trigger pre-built nuture flows.

3

INVALID RESPONSE

OPT-OUT

DISPOSE OF LEAD UNSUBSCRIBE

NO RESPONSE

OPTIMISED WEBSITEl Contentl Offersl Formsl Analysis

NO RESPONSE

MAPl Pre-MQL nuturel Recycled nuture

LONG–TERM NURTURERETARGETING

VA

LID

EN

QU

IRY

QU

ALIFIE

D

LEA

D

4

TELE/SALESl Accept/rejectl Outreachl Disqualifyl Qualify

RECYCLED NURTURE

Lead rejection and disqualification reasons trigger

recycling.

REJECTED LEADS

DISQUALIFIED LEADS

Perpetual Demand Creation

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THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS SERVICES MARKETING

To find out more about how to create perpetual demand, visit www.lbdga.com

Key Takeaways – Measuring Perpetual Demand

Response

RESPONSE BY TACTIC

CONVERSIONS

CAMPAIGN IMPACT

DATABASE GROWTH

Efficiency

MARKETING

TELEPROSPECTING

SALES

COST IMPACT

Results

PIPELINE CONTRIBUTION

PIPELINE PERFORMANCE

REVENUE

DEAL SIZE

cont.

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About Ledger Bennett DGA

We are a B2B Demand Generation agency that uses sales and marketing know-how to help customers increase revenue by deploying Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing and Marketing Automation strategies. Our highly focused Demand Generation programmes drive our customers’ business performance, helping them to:

n Generate more opportunity

n Convert that opportunity into sales

n Retain customers and grow their value

Using more measurable and cost effective techniques than traditional full service marketing agencies we are able to maximise business revenue in the modern world where the internet has fundamentally changed the behaviour of the buyer.

www.LBDGA.com

Telephone: +44 (0)8458 383883 Email: info@LBDGA.com

Milton Keynes:

Ledger Bennett DGA Tungsten House, Warren Road Little Horwood, Milton Keynes MK17 0NR

London:

Ledger Bennett DGA 1st Floor Centric House 390-391 Strand, London WC2R 0LT

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