Knowing your audience is important for any marketer, but it’s absolutely essential for B2B advertisers. Having the full picture of what a customer journey looks like helps you create a frictionless funnel for your users, and it means more quality leads. As we we reflect on the last year and plan for 2021, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself, your Sales team, and your marketing team.
If you’re advertising on Google, you probably know what your conversion windows look like – you know exactly how long it takes for a click to become a conversion. Do you know what happens after that? B2B success doesn’t just stop at the first form fill. As an advertiser, you want to know how many of your leads become MQLs, then SQLs, and ultimately how many deals your paid channels contribute to. This also means being aligned with your sales team. Your marketing strategy isn’t working if your leads aren’t turning into deals.
Here are some of the questions you should asking yourself (and sales!) about when it comes to audience targeting and lead quality:
- Who are the users you’re trying to target? Do they align with who the Sales team sees as their perfect customer?
- How is Sales qualifying these leads? Are you targeting the right users that are most likely to make it through the sales pipeline? And more importantly, are you excluding the users you know aren’t?
- Are you focusing on what you’re good at? A lot of B2B clients tell me they could work with businesses in any industry. And that might be true, but not only is there less up front cost to developing resources for these users (think the case studies, blog posts, or current clients featured on your site), but your sales team has some concrete examples of clients they’ve been successful with.
- How is Sales scoring leads? If your sales team is scoring leads based on how they’re interacting with your site or which webinars they’re signing up for, does your marketing strategy align with that system?
You also want to be able to tailor your messages to wherever your customer is in their journey. Ask yourself:
- How has my customer’s industry changed recently? Have their pain points – the reason they’re seeking my product – changed?
- How long does the consideration process take for my clients? And what information do they need at each step of the way?
- Not every campaign should be created equally when it comes to B2B. Make sure you’re measuring every valuable actions a user is taking at any stage of the funnel – even if it’s not the most valuable one.
- What does each buyer in the process need? Sometimes there are multiple buyers involved in making a decision of a B2B product or service. Are you tailoring your message to what each buyer needs to know?
