The digital era has totally reshaped our purchasing habits and expectations, once the power was in the hands of sellers, but now, it's a buyer's ball game! Just in the last 10 years, companies went from low-tech approaches, with legacy brands all holding the cards, to the present day where technology is an integral part of selling and trust can quickly be built through a screen.
The digital era has totally reshaped our purchasing habits and expectations, once the power was in the hands of sellers, but now, it's a buyer's ball game! Just in the last 10 years, companies went from low-tech approaches, with legacy brands all holding the cards, to the present day where technology is an integral part of selling and trust can quickly be built through a screen.
Not only do customers have more choices these days, but they're only becoming more astute. Digital Marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements every single day. The average person is bombarded daily with buckets of information, so naturally, buyers will conduct their own research on products and brands, consider peers' recommendations, online reviews, and expert suggestions before committing to a purchase. But when content speaks to them directly, the decision-making process becomes more streamlined.
If you're just catching up to these tectonic shifts in business, the landscape is still continually evolving! If anything, Covid-19 forced companies to adapt quicker. If you thought you were digital-centric before, B2B sales were also pushed further into the online realm. And it's going to stay that way. But what does this mean for marketers, salespeople, and dealers? Well, your pitch has to be technologically driven and more nuanced than ever. It may sound daunting, but there are 3 ingredients that can make sales happen flawlessly.
What is B2B Content Marketing?
B2B content marketing is a marketing strategy where businesses purposefully produce and distribute strategically planned and targeted content to attract and engage clients. It focuses on the solutions provided by the company’s products and services relating to customer issues and needs.
Often encompassing various content types such as blog posts, e-books, videos, infographics, case studies, and webinars, the content must be relevant, informative, and valuable to attract and engage customers with the solutions offered.
It plays a vital role in building trust with clients, promoting the brand, and growing the business, helping companies stand out from competitors and gain significant online visibility.
However, B2B content marketing requires careful planning and execution. The content must be targeted and purposeful to reach the correct audience and meet their needs. Monitoring content impact and adapting it as necessary is crucial in B2B content marketing to keep pace with customers' evolving needs and behaviors.
3 Pivotal Characteristics of Selling Well
1. Relationship Building
When you're in the business of selling and marketing to people, building relationships and a solid repertoire is where it's at. Even if you only ever speak through email! Every piece of content or pitch starts here, so before you start creating, you have to consider the needs of your audience. Most people want to tell you what they need, so start by researching and listening.
When selling B2B, it's essential to know the players within the organization as much as you do about the company itself. Because one department may want one thing while other places its value elsewhere, this is how you can unravel their actual needs and gain a deeper understanding of their pain points.
In the same vein, you want potential clients to be aware of who you are and what solutions you bring to the table.
Even if prospects are not at the stage where they're going to make a purchase decision, that visibility and understanding will keep you top of mind once the time comes.
Content should be created with a certain degree of candidness because all customers want to know there is a person at the other end of a brand. When building business relationships, it's vital to bring humanity to an oftentimes faceless corporation.
2. Personalized Sales Content
Demonstrating your value in a way that feels personal to your audience or prospective customers should be at the heart of your content strategy. In modern selling, intelligent content is how you capture and retain a client's attention. In fact, McKinsey & Company recently found that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, while 76% get frustrated when this doesn't happen.
Personalization is a foundation that will secure a sale and help you to up or cross-sell in the future. Delivering the right content at the right time is also key to moving prospects along the funnel. If you're not speaking your prospect's language or directly to them, you’re starting at a loss.
Read more about: Learn 8 Rules of Tailoring Your Presentations →
Think of this process as tailoring a suit. The basic blueprint and steps are there, but you've got to get the measurements right to make sure it fits in all the right spots. That means not dumping a ton of information on the client's head at once, instead guiding them from one sweet spot to the next in a manner that's relevant to them. Modern customers can smell a boilerplate pitch from a mile away, so keep content tailored where it counts.
3. Data
The importance of data cannot be overstated in the B2B sales content landscape. Relying on data is crucial! If you're currently not using data to guide your sales tactics and inform your content, you're essentially burning money. Data is such a windfall because it doesn't lie. It can help you find patterns in your industries that you didn't see before. It can provide insights you wouldn't get out of a conversation.
We know being able to gauge a prospect's reaction can be challenging, which is where data can settle the score. This information should inform your content strategy, allowing you to get more personal and build stronger relationships. If you're asking yourself questions like, which products are my prospects most interested in? Which selling point addressed their needs most effectively? Well, what if you could see what slide of your pitch deck they interacted with most? Data like that could help shape the follow-up conversation, maximizing sales potential.
This kind of data-powered personalization and insight gathering is what Showell excels at. Strengthen your content in how you create it, deliver it, and track it, making sure it's accessible at all times.
Learn more about the data, analytics, and insights:
With Showell, you can better connect your content, marketing, and sales cycle.
Easily share and personalize presentations in under 2 minutes, simply by mixing and matching existing files from a database of marketing content. Harness data to refine content over time, creating strong footing for content to begin.
Showell provides a cohesive virtual experience that translates to the in-person pitch seamlessly. We've seen it – the issue of having to deal with silos, inconsistent onboarding, and content not being used by your team. Showell adds structure that enables you to sell and market yourself to the best ability. We made a solution with these pain points in mind. Showell is an award-winning tool made to centralize all sales collateral for ease of onboarding, present with ease and assurance that you will have nothing but updated content, data to track engagement and activity to understand your prospects better, and so much more. To find out more, you can request a demo today!