In recent years, B2B clients have gotten more sophisticated and powerful. They prefer to do preliminary research on their own before filling out the contact form or approaching sales representatives. For B2B enterprises, demand generation has become an important marketing approach. The reason for this is because of its holistic nature, as it gives an integrated and in-tune strategy for engaging with prospects with the ultimate goal of increasing interest and attention to your products and services.
With millennials now joining Generation X and Baby Boomers at decision-making tables, the only constant in B2B purchasing behaviour will be: change. Leveraging deep desk-based research such as an industry insight program can assist in the understanding of changes in B2B buyer behaviour and guiding towards communications with their target accounts that are relevant and personalised.
Furthermore, because customers consume a large amount of material before speaking with a sales representative, expertise of the target industry is critical for the entire sales and marketing team, not just the content guys.
Few ways to learn and leverage your knowledge about target industries could be:
Educate the buyers vs. Advertise to the buyers
Targeted industry insight programs assist in uncovering the demographic changes occurring within the industry. Industry insight such as “The digital consumer has changed the face of retail, putting pressure on brands to adapt to digital transformation” add value from an insight perspective and can fuel educational communications in the retail sector which is strongly preferred over advertising. As a salesperson, if you can educate your buyers about something that is backed by your knowledge about the industry, wouldn’t that get you a step closer to winning the deal?
Personalized over generalized communications
Deep-dive insight fuels thoughtful, value-adding, and educative communications. Deep understanding of accounts, companies can achieve high levels of personalization at every touchpoint. In addition, industry-specific and customized communications can be fueled by an insight that is highly personalized and account-specific.
The right platform
Industry insight programs, which fuel personalized and targeted content, can help to foster long-term customer relationships. In addition to the personalized and educational nature of communications, the correct platforms need to be employed. A comprehensive industry insight can uncover the trends and drivers of any targeted industry. The trends and drivers of the targeted industry will unveil the right method and the right platform to approach your ideal customers.
How we helped one of our clients achieve 100% customization at scale
We previously catered to a million-dollar global SaaS firm that wanted to increase engagement with its prospects through content. The client’s marketing team wanted to ensure that they have all the data and facts in place before they launched their industry targeted campaigns. The major challenge they were facing was: their content wasn’t able to generate the desired level of engagement.
We worked with both the UK and US-focused marketing teams to deliver detailed and highly customized industry insight reports. Our report helped them position themselves as a company that understood customer challenges better and gained significant visibility across digital channels. We cannot be elated how our reports have been instrumental for the client to achieve their marketing campaign goals.
The insight reports proved extremely useful for their drip campaigns, webinars, blogs, and infographics. Not only did the insight reports increase engagement with the right audience across multiple social platforms, but they also reduced the overall cost of developing and launching campaigns.
Conclusion
Demand generation is the focus of targeted marketing programs and needs to be fueled with high-quality account and industry insight. Industry specific insight programs takes into consideration the preferences and dislikes of the people at the target industry. Most of all, the right kind of insight can fuel long-standing relationships based on customer retention and satisfaction.