Whether your company is old or new, your team is always under pressure to grow your business. Once your sales team has prospected every outbound lead they can find, you may wonder how you can possibly grow your business further. Digital marketing can serve as a more efficient channel to build awareness of your brand and drive leads for your B2B software company.
B2B software companies, in particular, face a number of challenges and a common problem for newer companies is building brand awareness. Even if someone has a problem your software can easily fix, they’ll never buy from you if they don’t know you exist. And if they do know who you are, they may choose not to buy from you simply because you have no presence (or credibility) behind your brand.
This isn’t unique to new companies, even established brands can struggle to bring in leads or close clients because they’re in a competitive space, or because the prospect doesn’t fully understand that they have a problem that needs to be fixed.
So Why Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing allows B2B companies to bridge the gap between their sales team and their prospects. B2B companies can reach prospects on the platforms they frequent, be it Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, or their favorite apps.
Like the rest of the world, buyers are moving to the digital space. According to Accenture.com, 61% of B2B transactions start online, and 58% use social media as a research channel. In fact, most customers are 57% through the buying process before they’ve even met with a company representative (Read: Revenue Marketing And The Shift Away From Lead Generation). Buyers are becoming more and more self-reliant and educating themselves, so providing a digital experience that allows them to do their own research is highly encouraging to B2B buyers.
Inbound lead generation significantly benefits your sales team. In a previous blog, we discussed how digital marketing can reduce lead acquisition cost and supplement your sales efforts. It also brings the leads right to your salespeople, so they can spend less time prospecting and more time actually selling and developing relationships with prospective buyers. This blog speaks about healthcare companies, but many of the problems plaguing healthcare sales are universal.
How to Utilize Digital Marketing Strategies to Build Awareness and Drive Leads
As B2B customers continue to shift to a digital buying process, it’s becoming increasingly important for B2B software companies to solidify and expand their digital presence.
There are several things that need to happen in order to develop your company’s digital presence. We recommend that you read our previous blog posts on establishing an inbound digital marketing foundation and inbound demand generation marketing.
Buyers are growing increasingly independent. They don’t want to spend time on a call with a salesperson until they understand and trust your brand and solution, they want it to be readily accessible online so they can decide if it’s worth continuing the conversation.
A well-optimized landing page is the ideal way to provide a prospect with the information they expect while leading them to give you their information – or their credit card. Some common questions include:
- What features does this software have?
- How does it compare to the competition?
- How much does it cost?
- Are the benefits of this software worth the cost?
- Will it integrate with my CRM and other important software?
- How do existing users like this software? Do they have any verified reviews?
- How do I get in touch with this company to learn more or get started?
There are millions of other questions your customers may want answered, but these are some great ones to consider when you’re planning your landing page.
Your landing pages should be used in conjunction with paid and organic inbound digital marketing strategies. Organic channels can take a very long time to produce results. Paid channels require a financial investment, but provide results faster than organic channels.
There are exceptions to the rule, as organic strategies such as Search Engine Optimization can be costly. You may pay a writer to produce your content or a linkbuilder to reach out to webmasters and ask for a backlink to your site. In some instances, your organic strategy may cost as much (or more!) than your paid strategy, and paying into your organic strategy doesn’t always lead to faster results.
Another important thing to consider is the competitive landscape. How competitive is your market? In highly competitive industries, paid marketing will likely cost more, and organic strategies will take longer to drive results. Being aware of your competition is important, especially in marketing. You can conduct a competitor analysis using our 2020 Competitor Analysis Checklist for B2B Marketing.
Where to Go From Here
Increasing your presence across any channel will result in increased brand awareness, as long as you’re reaching the right audiences. Consider running awareness or traffic campaigns on social media. They’re fairly inexpensive and will begin bringing prospects into your sales funnel, which we call acquisition. From there, you can begin the process of nurturing these prospects and guiding them through the sales funnel, ideally getting them to perform a desired action, like requesting a demo, and finally converting them into a paying customer.
Digital marketing is a large investment of time, money, and manpower, but a well-executed strategy can pay off. Interested in executing an inbound digital marketing strategy but don’t know where to start? Schedule a discovery call with OM and let’s see if we’re a good fit for your business.
