A personalised approach in B2B marketing enhances relationships and increases the likelihood of sales. But how do you get started?
One of the first challenges you face in B2B marketing is finding out information about your target audience. It’s a conundrum — people want to feel the company understands their needs and is addressing them on a personal level, but they’re reluctant to part with the information about themselves that will make a personalised approach possible. Fifty three per cent of B2B marketers state a lack of data is the reason they don’t personalise their content.
No one wants to put their personal information on a website without having some sort of connection to the product or company. Yet, in order to build that investment and trust, people need to feel they’ve received something from the company first. It’s a cycle that seems unbreakable, yet you can control this by making the first move.
The first, all-important steps to personalisation involve collecting essential data from those who visit your website. The more you learn about your visitors, the more you can personalise further contact with them.
Ideally, you’ll build up an initial picture of your visitor through the following data: name, email address, company name or website, company size and budgetary plans. However, it would be a very tolerant and trusting visitor who would give you all that information straightaway, so you’ll need patience and an effective strategy.
Start by creating a compelling piece of content such as a white paper or an eBook and ask visitors to share their name and email address in return for access. Remember the requirements of GDPR and include consent to use the data in an approved format. Then, put together a lead nurturing campaign, using those details, to strike up a dialogue. Remember always to offer something in exchange for more data. More great content expanding on the topic that sparked contact is ideal for this — perhaps offer a webinar as a second step, and to access it, your lead needs to enter their company size and URL.
Further content could unlock further information, until you have a comprehensive picture of your customers and prospects. It’s important to stay focused on achieving a deep understanding of your target audience and not get side-tracked into a profiling exercise. By breaking up data collection in this way you build trust and learn valuable information that you can weave back into the development of your website, for example, fine-tuning your CTAs.
The information that will allow you to create person-centred content and approaches is easily accessible, it just takes patience and the right strategy. If you’d like some more pointers on how great content can unlock your sales potential, then get in touch.
