For complex technology products and solutions, generating a marketing qualified lead (MQL) – one that is genuinely in-market for your solution – is just the first step in a long-drawn buying process. Even as the buying collective’s channel and platform preferences keep evolving, the opportunities for direct contact between buyer and seller seem to keep reducing. The challenge for marketers is to keep multiple members of the collective engaged through the buying journey – a process which can often take several months – with the ultimate aim of converting the prospect into a customer.
This process is referred to as nurturing the lead, but is really about nurturing the buying collective! With so many different needs and agendas at stake, progressive tech marketers tend to approach this not as a selling process, but more as a “buyer enablement” process – helping members of the collective find the right information, make more informed decisions, and collaborate more easily and decisively to move the purchase decision forward – preferably in their favour.
But positively influencing a buying collective is effort, time, and resource intensive. It requires multiple audiences, channels, and formats to be served with consistent and cohesive messages. B2B agencies that are armed with the right capabilities – expertise in data, insights, technology, and execution – can drive immense effectiveness and efficiency in the process.
By helping tech marketers drive “buyer enablement” with advanced nurturing strategies, B2B agencies can help create significant competitive advantages such as:
- Knowing the buying collective better: through the nurturing process, marketers get to know each member of the collective better – their needs, what communication they respond best at what stage of the journey, etc. These progressively stronger insights help further personalize campaigns, not just for this account and campaign, but for all similar accounts they will encounter in the future.
- Building stronger relationships: the period of time between lead and conversion gives marketers the opportunity to connect and engage buyers through their journey. High-value, high-stakes tech investments ultimately demand a strong partnership between the buyer and the chosen solutions provider. Credible, consistent contact and visibility in the pre-sales phase goes a long way in setting up a strong foundation for that relationship, not to mention building familiarity and trust in a scenario where direct face-time between buyers and sellers is reducing.
Here are the five must-have nurturing capabilities full-service B2B agencies need to support a “buying collective” focused nurture strategy:
- Display, retargeting, and contextual advertising: tech marketing needs access to diverse channels today to be relevant and timely in their audience interactions. With multiple display formats like banners and native ads, and more interactive innovations such as site takeovers, video, and gif embedded banners; there are many options to hyper target in-market buying collective members. Agencies that have a solid owned, operated, and partner display network including social and search platforms, not only offer ample reach and relevant traffic, but also ensure better return on advertising spend (ROAS).
- Email marketing: while expertise with marketing automation is a must for automated nurturing campaigns, the best return on investment (ROI) on email nurturing aimed at engaging or re-engaging leads needs a carefully planned cadence, relevant content, and authentic personalization. But full-service agencies must also be able to guarantee brand safety, with adherence to all regulations concerning data privacy and protection across geographies.
- Content marketing: dynamic content support – ensuring prospects recieve the right customized content at the right stage in their journey – for sales enablement is now table stakes. However, the quality and delivery of content has evolved. Buyers have the highest expectations in this area, as good content helps them make better decisions. Agencies need to be able to create customized dynamic websites, micro-sites, and content hubs; set up exclusive events such as video-meet ups and round tables; create customized white papers and guides based on the account-specific needs; and drive social media and search marketing efforts to amplify content engagement and reach.
- Channel/partner marketing: CMOs now acknowledge that mainstream sales and marketing can no longer exist in silos from channel marketing, as a bulk of sales for many technology brands – whether in hardware, software, or cloud – comes from indirect channels. A full-service B2B agency should be able to support a consistent brand experience from the brand and channel partners when nurturing the buying collective.
- Community marketing: communities have always been important to IT decision makers, but with work going remote and many in-person events having gone permanently virtual, online community marketing is becoming increasingly important for tech marketers. Virtual community spaces such as Spiceworks offer unmatched opportunities to engage with IT decision makers when they’re in work mode, often behind the firewall. Agencies need to enable access to such communities and help the brand drive engaging conversations and communications without alienating members with hardsell.
Nurturing actions based on strong insights through the buying journey can help create value and consensus across the buying collective, accelerate the buying journey, and deepen the relationship with buyers. As tech marketers will attest, cadence, relevance, and consistency across channels are key to the nurturing process. All of these capabilities need to be enabled by strong technology and execution foundations, as well as the best quality data informing the strategy. Data-powerhouses such as SWZD not only bring a deep understanding of buyers at an individual and account level, but also the ability to turn these customer-centric insights into action in the shortest time-to-value.