B2B Marketers: Stop Casting a Wide Net and Start Spearfishing Big, Fat Tuna Prospects, Instead
May 7, 2014
We all know B2B and B2C marketing are separate beasts.
B2C marketers are able to cast really wide nets to catch millions of minnows (i.e. paying customers).
B2B marketers (in most cases) have a finite group of businesses that will see the value in investing in the solution and become paying customers.
The distinction seems clear, but if that’s the case I have a question for the B2B marketers out there — why are you trying to cast such a wide net? As a result, what you’re bringing in is a bunch of scrawny catches mixed with random debris! You should be tossing the net aside and spearfishing for big, fat tuna, instead.
How to Go After the Big Catch in 3 Steps
Step 1: Identify Your Marketing Targets
Recently, I participated in a two-day onsite workshop with one of our portfolio company’s sales and marketing teams. This company, like many of our investments, has a very specific target customer segment — but they are still going too broad with their marketing approach.
There are roughly 2,000 target companies, and roughly five buying roles within those 2,000 entities. Therefore, there are literally 10,000 people that the marketing and BDR team should be touching.
Given that finite world of customers there is an incredibly opportunity to touch them all!
What an amazing thing, right? Of course, before they start reaching out they need to build that list of 10,000 names first. Luckily, there are plenty of third parties that can help with that.
The real task is building out an effective plan of engagement.
Step 2: Map Out Your Engagements
To engage directly, marketers need to be thinking about the following five C’s:
- Contact points: the channels you will use to make contact (email, *calling with BDRs, advertising, etc.)
- Context: your messaging taking into account who they are, their buying role, etc.
- Conversion: what do you want these buyers to do?
- Content: preferred content formats that your buyers want to consume
- Carrots: incentives to drive the conversion
Step 3: Report on Your Results and Provide Visibility
It’s important to report on this weekly — not only to keep yourself focused, but also to provide visibility to other executives who are depending on you to build pipeline.
What should be included in your reporting?
- Number of pieces of content created by type this week
- Number of point of contact (call, email, social, direct mail, etc) made to target prospects by marketing stage this week
- Number of conversions made by marketing stage each week
- Number of qualified leads sent to BDRs this week
- Conversion rate from qualified leads to appointments by BDRs
- Number of new contacts sent to BDRs this week
- Number of sales opportunities generated by marketing leads this week
- Total pipeline for marketing leads
- Closed won for marketing generated leads
Who should you send your reporting to?
Have any questions? I’d love to answer them in the comments. In the meantime, happy spearfishing, B2B marketers!
Image courtesy of Ed Bierman