But here’s the thing: customer service departments that enable self-service don’t get rid of their customer service agents, just like sales teams that enable self-service wouldn’t want to get rid of their salespeople. There will always be buyers who prefer to talk to real humans. Self-service just also allows you to account for the people who don’t.

Make Answers to Common Questions Easily Accessible

In order for your buyers to make self-service purchases, your website must be easy to navigate. You should have clear product information available and create a knowledge base to help buyers answer common questions. Be clear about what problems your product solves, which integrations are available, and what options are available for support.

Don’t force buyers to contact you for basic pricing information, especially if your pricing is pretty standardized. Buyers want the ability to make purchases without involving salespeople. It should be easy for researching buyers to see your pricing model and whether they can get a discount by signing a full-year contract.

Enable Chatbots and Autoresponders To Provide Information

Potential buyers may have questions that aren’t easy to find in your knowledge base, but they don’t want to ask a salesperson. In this case, you should enable chatbots on your website, allowing them to get answers to these questions easily, eventually escalating to a real person if they can’t find what they’re looking for.

Alternatively, you could set up an email address that buyers can email their questions to. Then, depending on the key phrases that are included in the email, the system will automatically reply with the most closely related answer or knowledge base article. 

Create Content on the Problems Your Product Solves

Creating a resources section on your website is a great way to provide potential customers with information that goes past the basics of your product. This is where you can store a variety of content about the different problems your product solves. However, you’ll want to make sure that you include content in several different formats, so you’re not forcing all of your buyers to consume content in the same way. 

How to Prioritize Customer Experience in the Buying Journey

For example, a cybersecurity vendor may want to create a short video on some common signs of phishing attempts and how their product can keep those emails from ever reaching employees’ inboxes. But not everyone likes to watch videos, so they could also create a how-to guide for spotting phishing scams. The majority of your content should be focused on the problems your users are facing, rather than what your product does because that’s what’s going to resonate best with buyers.

Offer Free Trials and Recorded Demos

Potential buyers should also be able to get a feel for how the software works before they commit to anything. Free trials are a great way to let researchers see how a tool will work for their business without any added pressure from a sales team. They can try out several of the features over a set period of time and make sure there are no glaring gaps in the functionality that they’ll need.

If a free trial doesn’t make sense for your product, then you can also offer recorded demos that buyers can access immediately, rather than having to wait for someone to schedule a live demo with them. While the demo won’t let them try out every aspect of the software, it will at least give them a general idea of how it works and what features are available. 

One note: if you gate your free trials or demos, keep the forms short, so buyers don’t have to give up too much information to access the assets.

Self-Service Can Help You Capture a Larger Audience 

Buyers each have their own preferences, and while some may still prefer going through a salesperson, we’re seeing many more opt for self-service. Because of this discrepancy, offering both options can increase your appeal to more buyers as you cater to their needs. Not only will this make potential customers more comfortable during the buying process, but it also shows that you’re already taking their needs into account, making them feel like you’ll continue to do that once they’re actually a customer.

Read next: Understanding Differences in B2B Buying Groups

The post Using Self-Service to Enable Buyers appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Vendors need the ability to assess the types of people who are likely on a company’s buying committee and make sure they’re tailoring messages to the needs of the company.

How to Outline the Makeup of a Buying Committee

To start, consider how long the company has been in business and how many employees they have. Startups, for example, are likely to have more executives on their buying committee because they have fewer employees and fewer manager-level decision-makers. Additionally, they may not have the capital for top-of-the-line software suites, so they may opt for standalone solutions, instead.

You’ll also want to consider whether the software will affect a single department or the entire business. The answer to that question will likely influence how many people are involved in the decision. More departments mean more people, and you’ll need to tailor your messages in a way that will help members create consensus. 

How Company Size Affects the Buying Committee

The more people there are on the buying committee, the more people you’ll need to buy into your value proposition. The CFO and the IT manager are going to have different needs, and you’ll need to address both (along with every other member of the committee) if you want to make the sale. Not only does this mean you’ll need to create several different messages that speak to each person’s unique needs, but you’ll also need to address many different needs with a single piece of content. 

You may not get more than one person on the buying committee to review your product, so you need to arm them with the knowledge that will make it easier to convince the rest of the committee that you’re the right choice.

Speaking to Different Levels of Seniority

Similar to members of different departments, buying committee members that have different levels of seniority will have varying concerns. Executives are more likely to be worried about the big picture — ROI, budgets, etc. — while individual contributors and managers are more likely to focus on details. For example, an HR manager might want to know how much time a payroll solution will save their team, while the payroll specialist will be more concerned with the actual process the software follows and what automation is available.

Neither approach is more important than the other. Committees need each of these types of people to raise relevant concerns and make sure they’re finding the best solution for everyone on their team. Therefore, as a vendor, you must be able to speak to issues for every level of seniority.

How Can You Target More Members of the Buying Committee?

So, you know that reaching more members of the buying committee gives you a better chance of winning them over, but how do you get in front of so many people? It’s important to remember that buyers all have different preferences, including the type of content they consume, where they consume that content, and even what devices they’re using. It’s basically impossible to reach every member of the buying committee with a single piece of content, so you need to adapt it to reach a wider audience.

Start with the format. You should have at least one written and one audio/visual piece of content for each of your value propositions. Some people prefer watching videos or listening to podcasts, while others would rather read an article. And the length of these options matters, too. An article and a social media post will attract very different audiences, in the same way that a TikTok will attract a different demographic than a webinar. You’ll have to consider your ideal customer profiles and determine what will likely work best for them.

Then, consider where your ideal customers are doing their research. Typically, buyers don’t contact vendors until they’re about 70% of the way through the buying journey. Instead, they’re typically on third-party sites doing research about the type of software they need and what solving their problems actually looks like in practice. You need to partner with these third-party sites to generate brand awareness and keep your company’s name top of mind when the buyer is ready to move forward.

Targeting Must Be a Multi-faceted Approach

Targeting members of the buying committee is difficult, and you’ll have a hard time making progress with a single approach. Use different types of media to speak to each persona, and consider how different messages will be received at each stage of the buying journey. As you learn more about your ideal customers, this will get easier, but you’ll likely undergo some trial and error to get it right.

TechnologyAdvice has an exclusive audience of 100 million engaged technology buyers and can help you get your brand in front of potential customers where they’re doing research. To learn more about our offerings and to see how we can connect you with your ideal customers, contact our sales team today.

The post Understanding Differences in B2B Buying Groups appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

As buyers look for ways to decrease this complexity, they’re focusing on vendors that provide a good customer experience. But what does that look like in practice, and how can you ensure that you’re providing the customer experience your buyers want?

Make Your Website Clear and Easy to Navigate

It should be easy for buyers to find the information they want on your site, which means clear menus and links to related pages where appropriate. Avoid marketing speak as much as possible, so your buyers know what they’re actually getting with your product. 

In addition, you should tell buyers what problems your product solves, not what features it has. Buyers are unlikely to understand what the features do except how it relates to their needs. Don’t overload them with information.

Finally, don’t force a sales conversation to find basic information like pricing. Additionally, buyers may not want to talk to your sales team at all, so if self-service sales are possible, you should make that available on your website. In fact, a few of the recent guests on the B2B Nation podcast have discussed how much buyers want to be able to make purchases without talking to a salesperson.

Understand What Your Customers Want & Need

Focusing on your customers’ wants and needs is key to providing a good customer experience. What are the pain points your ideal customers have? How can you solve them? If there are pain points that your buyers bring up often, make content on solving those issues readily available. And if you don’t know what problems your buyers are facing, ask them.

Are there specific features that your customers want? See if you can create a roadmap for adding highly requested features. This shows that you listen to your customers and care about improving their experience. 

Focus the conversation on your buyer instead of your product. Buyers don’t care about your product unless it can address their needs. And they’re likely to get frustrated if they don’t feel like you’re listening to them. For example, let’s say you go to a car dealership looking for an SUV because you need the extra space. However, the salesperson keeps talking about all the great features a certain sedan has. You’re probably going to be annoyed that they’re not listening to you and go to a competitor. The same is true for your buyers.

Podcast: How Business Users Change the Game of B2B Marketing

Provide Helpful and Responsive Customer Support

Customer support is one of the biggest contributing factors to renewals, and will likely influence new revenue through referrals. Buyers want to know that if they have problems, they’ll be solved quickly. Customer support should be easy to access and offer multiple channels like phone, email, and live chat to allow customers to contact your team in the way they’re most comfortable. Additionally, reps should respond quickly, and customers should have self-service options for quick answers to common questions.

Consider making customer support response times a part of your service-level agreements (SLAs), so new customers know what to expect. Otherwise, they’ll have to rely on reviews from other users, which may not always go the way you want it to.

Create Personalized Learning Paths for Buyers

Training and onboarding new customers can no longer be a one-size-fits-all approach. You should tailor the training based on the features the buyer needs for their business, the outcomes they want to achieve, and the industry they’re in. Personalized learning improves the onboarding experience and maximizes time to value, increasing the likelihood that the customer will renew their subscription. 

These learning paths should extend into your sales process as well. Provide different types of content for different problems and industry needs, so your potential buyers can see how your software will fit their needs. Additionally, you can distribute this content through third-party resources to ensure you’re also speaking to buyers that haven’t yet made it to your site.

Learn Why B2B Brands Need to Embrace Emotion and Education

Prioritizing Customer Experience May Get Your Buyers to Prioritize You

In times of economic uncertainty, vendors either typically have to be the cheapest or offer the best customer experience to get new business. And while being the cheapest seems easy, it’s probably not the best business practice. Prioritizing customer experience is a great way to attract new buyers because you’re showing that you care about their needs and are listening to what would make their lives easier. And this works well during all economic periods, not just when there’s a downturn in the market, making it a good long-term strategy.

If you need help getting your name and content in front of new buyers, TechnologyAdvice offers content syndication programs and display advertising options to help you attract new buyers. Contact us today to learn more.

The post How to Prioritize Customer Experience in the Buying Journey appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

However, brand awareness typically gets the short end of the stick when it comes to B2B marketing budgets. In fact, brand marketing only averages about 30% of the total marketing budget for an organization, with many companies allocating even less to branding. Much of this is because it can be difficult — but not impossible — to track success from brand awareness campaigns.

Brand to Demand is an audience-focused, full-funnel approach to B2B marketing. It’s more than an integrated program — it’s the idea that brand awareness leads to demand generation. Without name recognition, it’s going to be much harder to drive leads to your business. So, how can you bridge the gap that currently exists between these goals?

Introducing or Enforcing Your Brand to Your Buyers Where They’re Researching

Customers don’t buy from brands they’ve never heard of, for a couple of reasons. One, it’s very difficult to purchase something when you don’t know where to go. And two, the business hasn’t built any trust with the buyer. If buyers don’t know to come to you, you have to go to them.

Often, buyers start their research on third-party sites that offer content like top product lists and reviews instead of with vendors, meaning you need to be on these third-party sites as well. Customer reviews, display ads, and sponsored or guest content all give you opportunities to increase the awareness of your brand where your ideal buyers are already doing their research. You may have both paid and organic options for getting your name on these sites. Paid is likely easier, but organic placements will have more value.

Reaching Across a Variety of Channels and Touchpoints

Buyers all have unique preferences, and they may not be researching products all on the same channels. Your marketing efforts have to meet buyers where they are, whether that be on the phone, through email, reading blogs, watching videos, or scrolling through social media. Similarly, even on the same channels, you can’t use a single format to market your products. Some people may click a display ad but won’t watch a webinar, while others prefer to read a blog article or watch a video.

And these formats also have to reach across the funnel. The buying journey isn’t linear for many buyers, and they may restart phases of the process or the entire thing several times until they find what they’re looking for. Because of this, brand awareness has a much bigger impact than organizations often give it credit for. 

Podcast: How to Win at B2B Social Media

Using Intent Data to Understand In-Market Accounts

Intent data can tell you which organizations are actively looking for solutions like yours, making it easier for you to tailor your messaging to them. Using intent data, you can build target account lists, giving you a smaller pool of businesses to actively market toward while your brand awareness campaigns are working their magic. You can get intent data from your own website using tools like Google Analytics, or you can contract with third-party companies to get intent data on businesses that are demonstrating intent across the web.

What Are All the Ways People Demonstrate Intent?

Choosing the Right Messages for the Right Audiences at the Right Times

You can have the best messaging in the world, but if it doesn’t go to the right people at the right time, it won’t really do much good. The content you deliver to buyers should reflect the stage of the funnel they’re in. Top-of-the-funnel buyers need high-level information, while bottom-of-the-funnel buyers are ready to see product comparisons and more information about platform features. Buyers that move down the funnel have different needs than they did when they first learned about your product. And customers having new needs means you need to give them new content.

Optimizing Your Efforts

Brand to Demand marketing isn’t a strategy you can just set and forget. You have to constantly tweak it to make sure you’re getting the right mix of channels and that your targeting matches your ideal audience. For example, vendors often target specific job titles, when really any decision-maker would be a good lead for them. Plus, not all companies use the same job titles for the same role, so vendors could be excluding solid leads because they’re too focused on the title.

Find Partners with Brand to Demand Experience

If you’re newer in your branding journey, you don’t have to be an expert right away. You can start with the basics, like display ads and social media posts, and find partners that can help you get your brand in front of the right audience. That way, when buyers are ready to start their search, they already know what you offer.

TechnologyAdvice offers a full suite of Brand to Demand solutions, as well as integrated marketing packages, helping you reach buyers wherever they are in their buying journey. We offer a variety of different custom content formats, email newsletters, display advertising, and lead generation to help you get your name in front of more customers.

To find out if one of these integrated Brand to Demand packages is right for you, contact TechnologyAdvice today.

The post What Is Brand to Demand? And Why Does it Matter? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

So, how are these companies cutting through cluttered inboxes to get their messaging in front of potential buyers? 

Test, Test, Test

Not all email audiences are the same, so marketers have to test their emails in order to see what generates the most engagement for them. Email marketers that test their email programs can see up to a 28% increase in ROI. Many email marketing tools offer A/B testing features that let you test subject lines, send times, images, and calls to action to help you find out what works best. Remember to only test one variable at a time, or you won’t know which change is responsible for the impact. 

In addition to testing different variables, you should also send test emails to yourself and a colleague before sending an email to a wider audience to ensure all buttons and links work correctly, and you haven’t forgotten any key elements. This will also be a good way to see if you have any words in your subject line that may make the email go to the recipient’s spam folder. 

Optimize for Mobile

Approximately 41% of email impressions come from mobile devices. That means if you’re not optimizing your content for mobile viewing, your emails aren’t going to be as effective. Make sure each of your email components is responsive, so they adjust to the size of the screen that they’re appearing on. You don’t want your readers to have to scroll sideways to get the full picture because they likely won’t.

Within your email marketing platform, there should be an option to preview your email as if it were appearing on a mobile device. If not, send a test email to yourself and open it on your phone. See how it looks, and make sure all of the buttons work correctly.

Segment Your Lists

Not everyone in your audience should get the same emails. As part of your overall marketing strategy, you should have created some buyer personas. Use these to segment your audience lists to send highly relevant emails to each category. For example, if your company specializes in HR software, your email audience might include recruiters, payroll specialists, and benefits administrators. While the payroll specialists won’t care about how your software makes it easier to enroll employees in healthcare coverage, they will be interested in your automated payroll features.

Segmenting your email list keeps your audience engaged because they’re always getting the content that’s most relevant to them. If they know an email contains valuable information, they’re more likely to read it, and their trust in your brand will grow, keeping you top of mind when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Personalize Where Possible

Personalization is an easy way to make your email subscribers feel like you care about them. By adding their name to the subject line or within the body of the email, it gives the illusion that you’ve created this email specially for the recipient, even though they likely know you haven’t. Buyers want to feel important to the brands they purchase from because it gives them a sense of the service they’ll get if they need it. 

Personalization at scale is easy with most email marketing tools. You can insert a dynamic tag that often looks something like [FIRST NAME] (but may vary depending on your email platform), and it will automatically fill in the recipient’s first name. You can also do this with company names and other data fields you collect from your subscribers, maximizing the personalization of your emails. Just make sure you test these fields before sending the emails to ensure they autofill correctly.

A Little Effort Goes a Long Way with Email Marketing

Email marketing isn’t necessarily hard, but it does take some work to get it right. Taking the time to test your emails, personalize them, and optimize them for mobile can go a long way in keeping your readers engaged, especially if they’re only getting the most relevant content. With these steps, you should start seeing more engagement with your emails and, ultimately, a better ROI.

Knowing where to start with your email marketing can be difficult. For more email marketing and B2B marketing tips in general, subscribe to our Demand Gen Digest newsletter using the box below!

The post What Does it Take to Succeed with Email Marketing Today? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Luckily, businesses seem to be aware of the danger and are actively searching for protection. Just since June of 2022, nearly 14,000 organizations have expressed an interest in cybersecurity solutions across the TechnologyAdvice ecosystem. These organizations range from local government agencies to small mom-and-pop shops to large enterprises and everything in between. 

And not only are there a ton of companies looking for cybersecurity solutions, but there are also a ton of individuals leading the search. In 2021 alone, there were around 4,100 unique job titles searching for software solutions for their organizations, according to TechnologyAdvice first-party data. That number is growing, with nearly 4,300 unique cybersecurity job titles looking for solutions in 2022. Vendors will likely see that number grow even further in 2023.

In a sea of buyers, how can you find your ideal customers? Some of this is easy to navigate because if you only target SMBs, then you can target company size during lead generation and advertising efforts and direct content topics toward SMB security. But if you’re targeting larger companies, this becomes more difficult. More people get involved in the buying committee.

While it’s tempting to market to directors and executives, they aren’t the only ones researching. TechnologyAdvice’s data shows everything from C-level executives to security analysts looking for solutions, as well as employees in finance and risk departments. Each of these buyers is going to have different preferences and pain points, meaning you’ll need to address each of them in your marketing efforts.

Create Content in Different Formats

Here’s where personal preference comes into play for these buyers. Not everyone will read a blog or watch a webinar, so you have to create content in multiple formats to reach the largest potential audience. You must also consider social media marketing, digital advertising, and native ads. 

Understanding Native Advertising & Why It’s Successful

Not only do you need to use different formals, but you also need to market across the funnel because not every buyer is going to follow the same steps. Some may start with a problem and work their way to a solution, while others may start with a shortlist and justify their choice based on the different problems they need to solve. By having top, middle, and bottom-of-funnel content available, you can speak to buyers wherever they are in their journey. 

Speak to Buyers’ Needs

The more you talk about your brand and product, the less likely you are to resonate with buyers. Typically, buyers don’t really care about your product except for how it can solve their problems. Focus on buyer pain points and then position your offering as the solution, rather than spending too much time talking about the different features and benefits of your product. 

For example, your buyers likely won’t care if your product performs automatic backups unless you first connect with them on the dangers of ransomware and the data they could lose if they experience a breach. Then, they’ll understand the need for automatic backups and how it can keep them from having to pay a ransom to get their data back.

Learn How to Address Diversity in the Buying Committee.

Make Information Easy to Access

While gating high-value information makes sense as a lead-generation tactic, buyers are unlikely to contact you or give up their email addresses for basic information. For example, unless your pricing is truly custom, don’t make a buyer talk to sales to learn what your platform will cost them. 

Additionally, your website needs to be easy to navigate and should contain little marketing speak. For example, “digital transformation” is fairly vague and may not mean much to buyers unless you include extra information. However, “aggregating cybersecurity data into a single platform for higher visibility, automated remediation, and improved alerting” outlines clear benefits to using the platform and addresses pain points that the buyer is likely already facing.

Help buyers by Reducing Complexity in the B2B Buying Journey.

Meet Buyers Where They’re Already Researching

Buyers usually don’t go straight to vendors when they start their buying journey. Instead, they look to third-party sites for unbiased resources and help narrowing down a shortlist of vendors. As a vendor, you need to partner with these third-party sites to get your name in front of buyers sooner, allowing you to be top-of-mind when they’re ready to start talking to vendors.

TechnologyAdvice has an exclusive audience of over 100 million engaged technology buyers that come to our site to research products and solutions just like yours. We offer content, leads, and digital advertising all in one place, to help you surround and engage the entire buying committee with an integrated approach. To learn more about how TechnologyAdvice can help you meet cybersecurity buyers on their terms, contact us today.

The post Everyone Needs Cybersecurity. Who Do You Target? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Additionally, you don’t have to market on every social media platform to be successful, especially if you don’t have a large budget. Focus on the sites that most cater to your ideal customer profiles and start there, increasing your reach as necessary.

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular social media platforms and go over best practices for marketing on each.

Facebook

There are a lot of ways to use Facebook to engage with your audience, including posts (organic and boosted), ads, stories and reels, groups, and messages. However, you don’t have to engage in all of them to be successful — it really depends on how much of your budget you’re willing to put towards Facebook marketing and how much time you can devote to it. 

Posting, for example, is completely free. But if you end up with a post that gets a lot of engagement, you may decide to pay to boost that post for a limited time to help it reach even more eyes. You could also turn that content into a video for a reel (again free) or turn it into a story ad (paid). For more paid options, consider creating Facebook ads. Facebook has one of the largest potential audiences of social media platforms (around 2.11 billion people), so it’s a good place to focus your social media advertising efforts if you have a limited budget.

Additionally, make sure you’re posting when you’re most likely to get engagement — typically, on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 AM and noon, but your business and audience may vary. Test things out to see what works best for you, and use analytics to compare engagement numbers.

Instagram

Instagram requires photo and video content, so it’s probably not one to focus on if you don’t have the resources to create high-quality original content. Stock photos can only get you so far. However, if you do have the resources available, there are a lot of ways you can engage with this audience.

Like with other social media sites, posting regularly is going to be key to keeping your following up and finding new followers. Accounts that post regularly get a bump in the algorithms, making it easier for new people to find you. Additionally, Instagram has put a lot of focus on reels recently, meaning that video content is getting promoted in the discover tab (free) more than still photos. However, you can also pay to boost your posts or stories and use hashtags to increase their reach.

Games, contests, and challenges tend to get the best engagement on Instagram, so it’s a great place to post giveaways, poll your audience, or challenge them with trivia questions. Instagram stories make it easy to post polls or get audience input, so make use of them whenever possible. Instagram paid ads are also a good option, showing up in the user’s feed and acting like native content.

LinkedIn

One of the best ways to market your business on LinkedIn is to post regularly about industry trends and thought leadership for your industry. Posting around 20 times per month can help you reach approximately 60% of your LinkedIn audience. While that may seem like a lot of posts (about one every weekday in a month), not everyone in your audience will log in every day, so you have to ensure you’re in their feed when they do. 

Additionally, try publishing your posts at different times to see what gets the best engagement for your audience, and then create a schedule based on that. For example, maybe you get a lot of engagement in the mornings on Tuesdays, but on Wednesdays, it’s all in the afternoon. You’d want to follow those trends to make sure you get as many eyes on your posts as possible. You may also want to sponsor certain posts to get them in front of even more people.

You should also use images and videos in your posts to make them pop. Text can easily get lost in a feed, but visuals catch the attention and make people more likely to take another look. And using two to three hashtags in each post can help you grow your audience by putting relevant content in front of people actively looking for it. 

Compare the effectiveness of social media vs. email marketing.

Pinterest

While Pinterest may not strike you as a place to market B2B products and services, it does have some advantages. For one, pins can stay relevant for a very long time — about 1700% longer than Facebook and 7665% longer than Twitter. This means that Pinterest doesn’t have to be your driving strategy for social media marketing, but you can post every couple of weeks or so to gain some additional eyes on your products. 

Additionally, the Pinterest algorithm doesn’t have the same disdain for links that other social media algorithms do. Almost every pin links offsite, meaning you can link back to product or lead-generating pages with little to no penalty. And because those pins are staying around longer, you’re getting more potential value per pin than you would per post on Facebook or Twitter. 

Consider your captions carefully, and make sure you’re using language that matches the intent of your audience. The site does also require some visual element, so make sure your photos and videos are high quality. Plus, you’ll need to make sure they’re interesting enough to convince someone to click on the pin and visit your site.

TikTok

TikTok is rapidly growing, but like Instagram, it requires video content and may not be a good option if you’re just starting out with your social media marketing efforts. You’re going to have to create original content, and it’s going to require a lot of time because you’ll need to follow the trends which change rapidly. Hashtags can help you see what’s trending currently, and you can include them in your post to reach a wider audience.

If you can afford it, paying TikTok influencers to promote your content can help you build trust and reach more people. There are tons of technology influencers on TikTok, as well as influencers in other niches that might be relevant to your product, like HR, project management, and growing a small business. 

What is B2B Influencer Marketing? Examples & Success Stories

You also have to post often and engage with other creators. TikTok, like other social media platforms, rewards users who are active. Make thoughtful comments on other people’s posts to get more visibility for your own account and encourage the algorithm to promote your account more in the discover feeds. 

Twitter

Twitter is one of the easiest social media platforms to get started on because it doesn’t require photos to be successful (although you can include them). Keep messages short, conversational, and to the point — you only have space for 280 characters, after all. Additionally, not all your tweets should include calls to action. Some of them should simply be about sharing information or even making a joke about your industry.

Your ads, however, should include clear calls to action. Although avoid putting links in ads when possible because the algorithm is designed to keep people on Twitter, meaning it won’t promote posts that want to take a user to another site as well. The same is true for your organic posts. While sometimes you’ll need to include links, try to keep it to a minimum.

Look at the trending events and topics to determine if there’s a topic you should comment on, and follow and engage with other accounts in your industry to help build a following for your own brand. Additionally, include one to two hashtags in tweets when appropriate to help reach a wider audience. And remember that liked tweets are public, so don’t like anything on your business account that you wouldn’t want customers to see.

YouTube

YouTube is basically a combination of both a social media platform and a search engine, drawing an audience looking for information and entertainment. Additionally, because Google owns YouTube, searches on Google often return relevant links to YouTube. Like TikTok, it requires video, although the videos on YouTube can be longer and still get engagement, so it’s a great place for product demos if you have them or can create them. However, it may not be a priority for all businesses. 

Because YouTube doubles as a search engine, you’ll need to optimize your videos for SEO best practices. That means creating a title and meta-description that includes your focus keyword. You should also do research on thumbnail options to determine what kinds of pictures will perform best for that keyword. Pictures of people perform well for a variety of topics, but they may not be right for everything. 

Additionally, approximately 70% of people claim they’ve made a purchase after seeing the product or service on YouTube. Therefore, even if you don’t want to make full videos for YouTube, you should consider running video ads to reach people already researching topics related to your product. Alternatively, you can work with YouTube influencers to promote your product. This will help you build trust within the community, and you likely won’t have to handle much, if any, of the video production. 

Which Sites Does Your Brand Belong On?

There are a lot of social media sites out there, and it’s unrealistic to attempt to market on all of them. B2B software vendors should focus their efforts first on LinkedIn and Facebook, then add others that fit their needs as they get more comfortable. If you have high-quality photo and video content, definitely consider expanding your reach to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And if not, but you still want to reach a larger audience or your brand has a more casual voice, add Twitter to your lineup. Or if you do have photos and videos but not much time, consider Pinterest to extend the life of each post.

Social media is great for building brand awareness and engaging with your audience, but it can’t stand alone as a marketing strategy. For help meeting your buyers at every stage of the funnel from brand to demand, contact TechnologyAdvice. We have a host of marketing and lead generation solutions that can help you meet your buyers where they are and give them the information they need to buy effectively.

Learn How to Win at B2B Social Media

The post Best Practices for Marketing on Different Social Media Sites appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

But what does this look like in practice, and should marketers continue to spend money on a practice that they aren’t even sure is working?

What Is Native Advertising?

Native advertising is a type of paid content that lives on third-party sites. It typically mimics the look of the third-party content, allowing it to blend in with the site’s normal content. Native advertisements shouldn’t look like ads and won’t disrupt the user experience, although they should be clearly identified as sponsored content. Instead, they should provide relevant content that will improve the user’s experience in the places they’re already looking for information.

Native advertising can come in several different forms, including social media posts, search results, and blog articles. The format you decide on will depend on where you want to host your ads.

Examples of Native Advertising Formats

• Blog articles
• Videos
• In-feed social media ads
• Content recommendations

Native Ads vs. Display Ads

While both native ads and display ads appear on third-party sites, display ads are typically more obvious. They focus on brand awareness, rather than solving customer problems or offering thought leadership. Display ads only have so much room, so advertisers have to make sure their brand or product is prominently displayed.

The above image shows an example of several display ads. These would stand apart from the rest of the content, usually in the margins of the webpage. Additionally, they don’t offer much information to the reader — just a call to action or a highlight of a service.

Native ads, while called out as sponsored, should appear similar to non-sponsored content and provide value to the reader or viewer. For example, an HR software vendor might pay for a native blog post addressing the difficulties of onboarding and then providing some tips on how businesses can improve their onboarding process, eventually positioning their software as a solution. Native ads are typically more effective than display ads at generating leads, as long as they are relevant to what the buyer needs.

As you can see in the above image, the middle post is clearly labeled as sponsored, but otherwise, it blends in seamlessly with the rest of the content. This is an example of a TechnologyAdvice native ad currently running on the TechRepublic website. It doesn’t disrupt the reader experience and offers them a solution that they might be looking for if they need security software recommendations.

Why Does Native Advertising Work?

Native ads tend to work due to the fact that consumers look at them more because they’re placed in line with the content they’re already consuming. And while they likely recognize them as ads, consumers usually don’t mind native ads as long as they provide value. Additionally, good native ads typically talk about customer problems instead of focusing on the vendor’s products, making buyers more receptive to the messaging.

Your ads also get boosted by the reputation of the third-party site, so if you advertise on trusted third-party sites, you’re more likely to get quality leads. Naturally, this means your sponsored content also needs to be relevant to the content of the site you’re advertising on. For example, a cybersecurity vendor shouldn’t advertise on a blog about gardening.

Native Ads Help You Meet Buyers Where They Are

Successful native advertising is all about meeting buyers where they are. Buyers are taking over more of the buying journey on their own, meaning they’re likely already researching products like yours on third-party sites. Native ads get your product in front of those buyers to build trust and brand awareness, so when they’re ready to buy, your product is top of mind.

TechnologyAdvice has an engaged audience of over 100 million technology buyers that visit our portfolio of sites to research products just like yours. We can help you reach the right audience at the right time and create engaging content that will resonate with your buyers. To learn more about our native advertising options, contact us today!

The post Understanding Native Advertising & Why It’s Successful appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

However, mentoring programs can be difficult to implement, especially when organizations don’t have the right technology in place or know how to use it. Mentoring software can help businesses effectively start and run mentoring programs. Here are a few tips for deploying it in a mentoring program.

If you don’t have a mentoring software solution in place yet, check out our Mentoring Software Product Selection Tool. It’s free, and in as little as five minutes, generates a customized list of mentoring platforms that will fit your business’s needs.

Use the Mentor Matching Capabilities

Mentoring tools match mentors with mentees based on personality traits, career stage, and other factors. Many software solutions, like Together Mentoring Software and mentorcliQ, use AI algorithms to analyze mentee and mentor profiles and provide match scores, so mentees can choose from a range of potential mentors.

Administrators using Together can also include custom fields if they have other variables they want to base matches on. 

While suggested matches aren’t the only way to pair members of a mentorship program, these matching capabilities increase the likelihood that a mentoring relationship will be successful. And when a tool can do the pairing for the mentorship program administrator, it saves that person time to focus on the more substantive aspects of the program.

Listen to: Tips for Leadership and Coaching to Guide the Next Generation of B2B Marketers

Track Goals and Progress

When mentorship pairs meet, they should use a platform to track SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals. For example, a new manager might set this goal: “I want to learn and implement three time-management strategies for my staff by the end of the quarter.” Setting SMART goals ensure that mentees are getting value out of their match and the program as a whole. 

PLD Mentoring Platform, for instance, includes fields for participants to input their goals and any tasks they need to complete in order to accomplish them, as well as a spot for notes. Mentees and mentors should regularly update the goal progress, checking off tasks that have been completed or extending the deadline for those that need more time.

If the mentee isn’t progressing, it may be time to move them to a new mentor or reevaluate their goals.

Read more: How HR Can Implement Education that Supports All Employee Types

Communicate Frequently With Participants

Mentoring program administrators should check in regularly with participants to ensure that pairings are still working well. A mentee may be hesitant to tell their mentor that there’s a problem or things aren’t working out. A third-party check-in provides the mentee with a one-on-one opportunity to raise concerns or request a new mentor without fear of retaliation from their current mentor.

Platforms like Pushfar offer instant messaging capabilities, providing a secure, monitorable means of communication between mentors and mentees. Chronus includes a feedback portal, allowing admins to create participant surveys and speak directly with both mentors and mentees.

Generate and Review Reports Regularly

Reports are a great way to determine how successful a mentoring program is. Most mentoring platforms include customizable reports that track metrics such as:

• Participants’ goal progress
• Participants’ survey ratings
• Retention rates
• Promotion rates

These reports provide deep insights into how the program is performing and let administrators know which areas might need improvement.

Many mentoring tools like Qooper also include configurable dashboards, allowing administrators to get real-time data at a glance. They can select the most important metrics for their program and exclude extraneous information.

Mentorship Makes Employees Feel Valued

Mentorship programs are a great way to show employees that you’re invested in their talent, growth, and their future with the company. And feeling valued is a big part of talent retention. In fact, feeling under-appreciated is a key factor for 79% of employees who quit their jobs. If employees don’t think their current company values them, they’ll find a new organization that will.

Mentoring software can help engage and retain employees, especially when it’s customized to fit the needs of your business and mentoring program. Features like AI-based pairing algorithms, SMART goal tracking, participant feedback, and actionable reporting can help you ensure your employees are getting the most from their experience.

Read next: Need To Increase Employee Retention? Train Managers As Career Coaches

The post Getting the Most Out of Your Mentoring Software appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

As businesses become more dependent on technology and the tech is interconnected, more people are necessarily involved in the decisions. Buying committees now include an average of 11 people, with large enterprises often including more. Gaining consensus is one of the most challenging parts of the buying process now, and vendors need to find a way to simplify it. By addressing and marketing to the diversity in the buying committee, vendors have a better chance of getting their products in front of the right people. 

Buyers Have Different Preferences

Not all members of the buying committee will look for the same types of assets and information. Some may prefer webinars and video events, while others would rather read an article or download a PDF. Some will click on paid ads while others won’t. And many will go to third-party sites first to do research before they ever get to a vendor because they’re looking for unbiased information.

Vendors have to meet buyers where they are, which means creating content in a mix of formats; generating a good mix of earned, owned, and paid media; and working with third-party sites to get your product in front of a larger audience. While one content format may get you in front of one person on the buying committee, it likely won’t be enough to create a consensus. You’ll need multiple members of the buying committee to take notice of your product to have a chance of getting the business. 

Buyers Have Different Concerns

Buying committees are made up of several different job titles, and different job titles mean a variety of pain points. Additionally, even the same job title at different companies can mean different things, so you’ll never know exactly what problems buyers are looking to solve unless you speak directly to them. Unfortunately, you may not get the chance to address every member of the buying committee.

Therefore, you must make it easy for members to assuage their colleagues’ concerns. Vendor content should address a variety of problems that your product solves. And focus on the problems and solutions, rather than the features your offerings include. Buyers won’t care about all the cool things your product can do if it can’t solve their problems. And if they aren’t sure it will, they’ll move on to another option.

Do We Under-Value ‘Experience’ in our B2B Marketing Efforts?

Buyers Have Different Roles Within the Committee

Just like buyers have different concerns they’re looking to address, buyers also handle different roles within the buying committee. Managers and senior individual contributors may identify that there’s a problem and start looking for ways to solve it, typically with new technology. Then, they’ll determine what exactly they need feature-wise to solve that problem and if there are tools that include additional features that could be useful. At that point, they may bring in leaders from other departments to find a product that addresses a wider need. 

And you also have to worry about influencers — the executives and directors who will weigh in to help create a consensus and make the final decision. Influencers can be a real challenge to address because they tend to hop in and out of the process. Anywhere from 3.1 to 4.6 groups within the organization can influence the purchasing decision.

Most of these people won’t be actively searching for solutions, so how can you address all of them during the buying process? You’ll need to address various pain points in your marketing efforts, including budget, to help buyers that find your product communicate effectively with the rest of their committee. 

Buyers Have Different Processes

To make matters even more complicated, the buying journey isn’t linear, and buyers may follow any order of steps and go back to them several times. For example, a buyer may be introduced to a solution and then determine whether they have a problem that warrants it. Or they may identify a problem and start identifying potential vendors, only to realize their problem needs to be addressed in a different way, pushing them back to the research phase.

To make sure you’re getting in front of the right people, you must create content for every stage of the buying process and find ways to place it beyond your website. You can’t expect all of your buyers to start at the top of the funnel and follow your product down it until they turn into a lead. You may not even get to talk to them directly until they’re further along in the buying process. 

No Two B2B Software Buyers Are the Same

Vendors can’t capture all buyers with all marketing campaigns, so you must create a variety of campaigns to speak to each person on the buying committee. You’ll need to target certain pain points or preferences to resonate with a specific audience. Additionally, creating a mix of content and campaign formats gives you the best chance to reach members of the buying committee and help them create a consensus.

TechnologyAdvice helps vendors reach their intended audience with our lead generation and content syndication services. Not only can we help you create compelling content to inform and engage buyers, but we also leverage our audience of 100 million exclusive tech buyers actively researching products like yours. Contact us today to learn more and see how we can help you fill your pipeline.

The post Addressing Diversity in the Buying Committee appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.