Top Mistakes Organizations Make in B2B Marketing: Part One

The way you make purchasing decisions forpersonal items you buy on Amazon is very different from the way you acquireproducts or services for work. The main difference? It takes longer to decide,and there are fewer purchases made on a whim in a work setting, especially forbig-ticket purchases. Understanding that difference and building your marketingstrategy around it often means the difference between successful marketingcampaigns and crickets.

One of the biggest challenges that causeorganizations to stumble with B2B marketing is dealing with long sales cycles.It can be frustrating when your marketing efforts do not seem to be paying off,even after investing significant time and resources. If you have a great product,yet find yourself struggling to generate demand, it could be because you aremaking one or more of the following common mistakes in B2B marketing.

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Not Considering the ROI on your Marketing Spend

Most organizations we speak with have ameaningful marketing investment. Still, very few take the time to consider theROI, or in other words, few have built the tools for marketing attribution. Attributionhelps you understand the value you’re getting from each of your marketingchannels. For instance, your own team may be sponsoring conferences and events,supporting a non-profit, organizing happy hours for prospects and clients, evenholding webinars, and sending sales folks to symposiums just because “we haveto be there”. Very few can link those expenditures back to the value theygenerate. How many clients and new prospects did that conference you sponsored generateat the end of the day? Not knowing the answer is a lost opportunity and a costlymistake.

In general, what we’ve found time and againis that running or sponsoring conferences has a very low ROI. They certainlyserve a purpose – your presence at industry events helps to build brandawareness and increase your “touchpoints” with prospects. But if you runattribution analysis, you would likely find that you are getting pennies backon the dollars spent on your events. What generates a high ROI in B2B marketing?Content. Authentic, value-additive, engaging content is by far the highest ROIthat your marketing dollars can bring.  But don’t take our word for it. Calculate theROI yourself.

Thinking that one whitepaper is good enough

We can’t blame you, this is a common one. Ipersonally made this mistake myself when writing my first white paper for ananalytics company I co-founded, Novus Partners. It is so tempting to think thatthis particular piece of content you are creating will generate hundreds ofleads and help with conversions.

While one white paper is better than none,it is essential to remember that you must engage your leads over a long salescycle, and most of your leads are not yet ready to convert, even after readingone great piece of content. The best content is targeted, not only to the stageof the funnel the reader is in but also to their role and organization. Askyourself this question: Am I speaking to all my potential prospects with thiswhitepaper? Have you considered other roles or organizations that may need adifferent perspective? It is tough to write one single white paper that canspeak to all your different prospects.

Even if your target audience is interestedin the topic you are covering, one piece of content is almost never enough. Justlike building a personal relationship, you need to have multiple interactionswith your prospect. In marketing terms, these are called touchpoints. Havingone white paper is just a single touch point – and your prospect needs more toform a strong understanding of your brand, company, product and service.

An excellent white paper is an arrow inyour quiver, but it can’t win the battle alone. It must fit into a largerstrategy that nurtures and converts your leads into paying clients.

Missing the “Nurture” phase of your customer journey

Long sales cycles mean that B2B marketersneed to be patient and persistent in their efforts. However, many organizationsmake two crucial mistakes after generating a lead. They either neglect theirleads leaving them to explore other alternatives, or they sell too hard totheir leads, hoping they are ready to convert. Both mistakes ignore anessential part of your marketing funnel: the nurture phase, also known as the“Engage” stage.

It is clear that leads are more likely toconvert when they have been nurtured over time. B2B organizations should focuson building relationships with their leads by providing them with valuablecontent, preferably targeted to their particular role in the organization aswell as their readiness to make a purchase decision.

The Nurture phase of your funnel shouldconsist of long-form articles that deal with the specific challenges of yourclients or prospects, and yet the content should not push your products as theimmediate solution. They should be engaging enough and offer enough value foryour reader to take the next step that leads to just another touch point withyour company.

This phase is also used to collectinformation on your prospects (via a simple form before downloading an article)and contribute to the scoring of the lead. The more content your prospectsinteract with, the higher their lead quality score.

Organizations can avoid these mistakes byfocusing on the right marketing channels, nurturing leads, aligning sales andmarketing efforts, and understanding the customer journey. By doing so, theycan improve their chances of generating quality leads, nurturing them, andfinally closing deals.