Is Your Marketing Ready for the New Buyer Surge? (Part 3)

Is your marketing ready for the surge?

Covid ushered in “a mass migration to digital.” B2B buyers (over 70% of them) now consider remote selling and digital self-serve tools more effective than in-person interaction (McKinsey). By 2025, over 80% of B2B buyer interactions will occur in digital channels (Gartner). 

Think about the implications: If B2B buyers now consider digital self-serve tools and remote selling more effective than in-person selling and meetings/events, then our whole industry, which has rested on the strength of “the relationship” is in for a wake-up call. 

Add to this, the industry saw its first substantial increase in Q2 sales this year (year-over-year), with 63% of distributors reporting an increase (ASI).

The statistics are pointing to a growing reality: 

A new surge is happening right beneath our feet

In 2020, while we were battling covid in isolation, a tidal wave grew quietly beneath us: raw materials shortages brought inventory setbacks and production issues in massive waves to our shores. It was a disruption months in the making, now our daily battle. 

And there’s another surge stirring beneath us. While the economy is rebounding, prospects now use the web exclusively for finding, vetting, and selecting future business partners. B2B buyers now consider digital selling the new normal. 

The current tidal wave is material, the next tidal wave is digital.

But I’m too overwhelmed to think about that now

Let’s pause for a minute and acknowledge this moment’s reality: You are fried, burnt crispy. Inventory ills. Problematic orders. Importing impossibilities. It’s a brutal time to be in the business. You and your team are firefighters, dousing one blaze after another. A sales rep once came into my office during a difficult season with a stack of problems -all raging fires- and I replied, “okay, who can we not afford to piss off?” It’s a bad season when you prioritize by irritation factor. 

But what worries the savviest leaders is what we’re not worried about now. While the pressing problems of production keep us occupied, leaders know that it’s their job to protect the herd by lifting their heads above the fray to spot future challenges and look for future opportunities. 

Since the selling future is digital, the problem and opportunity we should be preparing for are creating a digital-first experience that meets future buyers where they prefer to play.  

And that’s good news. It’s good news IF … 

… we take the critical time now to stop, reassess, and recalibrate our marketing. By doing so, we will create a self-operating funnel of future leads. It won’t be easy; nothing great can be accomplished with zero effort but, you will be surprised at how evergreen your future will look if you recalibrate for a digital-first future.

Everyone -regardless of how progressive, advanced, or sophisticated you are- needs to reassess their digital experience. In 2020, those that had put in the work, overhauling their websites and lead-gen engine, will reap first-wave rewards. But, as my cranky but endearing math teacher, Mr. Burgiss, once barked at me after I solved a problem in front of the class, “don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, Lehew.” We can’t afford to be proud of our average intelligence in the arena of marketing. Marketing is a fluid mastery.

Some of us are caught flat-footed at the moment: our marketing emails are occasionally sent and occasionally interesting, we have ambitious but executable content plans, our websites need updating, our CRM is a haphazard tool, and our sales funnel is dry. But here’s what I’ve discovered: making a course correction, amping your marketing efforts takes a lot of work now that pays big dividends later and continuously. 

To help with your efforts, we’ve compiled a list of the essential areas you and your team should review to make sure you are maximizing your marketing to get ready for the digital wave and action points for each category, plus, a few secrets we’ve learned along the way.

Here are the 7 pillars of a powerful lead-gen Strategy

1. Email: We’ve lost our way when it comes to email marketing. Do we push product? Seasons? Do we write a newsletter or create flyers? (God forbid). One thing is certain: The only way to refine the best email experience is through trial and error. Experiment. Review. Experiment. Review. And above all: be consistent. Ann Handley wrote that, in 3 years, her newsletter grew from 2,000 readers to over 45,000. Keys? Quality matters. Stick to a schedule (at least twice a month). Be entertaining, informative, and remember that an email is an intimate form of communication now. You’re talking to someone, not at someone. And with Slack and DM’s, email is the most sacred and overlooked inbox. Ann: “an email newsletter is not a distribution strategy, it’s a relationship-builder.” This is really good news for those of us who believe we’re in the relationship business. 

   • Starter step: Check out Ann’s podcast episode or skucon talk to reassess or kick start your email efforts. 

   • Tools we like: Mailchimp. And while you’re reviewing, put Mailchimp on your “watch what they do with content” list. They are masters at delivering inspo-edu-tainment. 

   • Secret we discovered: Solve don’t sell. Or rather, solve & sell. The best brands can do both, in the same email.

2. Social media: Social media is more than posting. Four key areas should be given equal weight in importance: creating, listening, contributing, and analyzing. Most of us get the creating part, and we understand the listening part (but grossly minimize the importance of it), and we rarely contribute to the sharing economy, rarer still: analyze our efforts. It takes a healthy balance of all four to create a holistic, workable strategy. 

   • Starter step: To help formulate your strategy, tune into this amazing episode Social Media Secrets from the Pros, featuring our own Alyson Brunton, and also check out her post on analytics.

   • Tools we like: Hubspot, Link My Photos 

   • Secret we discovered: Make your brand its own likable personality. Light up the room each time you enter. Adopt the mantra of designer Milton Glaser: Inform and delight.

3. Content (blog): Content is about building trust. Period. A robust content strategy isn’t all listicles and likes. Sometimes, we’re so fixated on the quick hit with content that we forget that content is a long game: contribute now, reap big dividends later. Your content strategy should feature your customers, your customer projects, demonstrate your expertise by solving problems and solve not shill. Like social media, it consists of both creating and analyzing. If your social media personality is the outward expression of your brand, your content is the quiet but powerful undercurrent of your mission: both working in harmony create an irresistible magnet of attraction.

   • Starter step: Review the 2021 Content Marketing Report created by Marketingprofs and Content Marketing Institute. It’s a goldmine of inspo. 

   • Tools we like: Hubspot, Squarespace 

   • Secret we discovered: Be helpful, highlight your heroes, ask for subscribers (with pop-ups) and … put a CTA on it. And by “it,” I mean, everything.

4. eBooks / Lookbooks: I’m putting ebooks and lookbooks in the same category though they likely deserve their own bucket. To simplify: think of ebooks as educational and lookbooks as inspirational. When I was a distributor, ebooks were our #1 lead gen resource. We wrote helpful guides that prospects wanted. You can do the same with your expertise. BTW: You’re reading one chapter in an ebook. We write regular posts that we roll up into one ebook after another, and then we offer each ebook (with its own landing page) for free. It’s a long play, but damn is it evergreen.     

   • Starter Step: Check out our ebook resource page to get an idea of how we try to help customers. 

   • Tools we like: Good ole’ Google docs (great for team collaboration), InDesign, and (blush) shops. 

   • Secret we discovered: For ebooks, we never sit down to “write a book.” Write a weekly or bi-weekly blog post and roll it up into a quarterly ebook. You can build a winter’s cord of wood cutting one log at a time. For lookbooks, skip the cluttered pdf creation process and multiple client emails and just build an anybody-can-do-it pop-up shop. It’s easy, elegant, and a self-serve tool that clients crave. And it makes you look smart.

5. Analytics: Knowledge is power. This business is so reactionary, most of us rarely analyze our work, but with digital marketing, it’s imperative. And analytics is more than web traffic. It’s social media, content, user analysis, and more.  

   • Starter Step: Read How to Blend Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Analytics to Grow Better by Hubspot. 

   • Tools we like: After a variety of tools we experimented with through the years, we use Hubspot. 

   • Secret we discovered: Analyze quarterly, not monthly. And invite diverse opinions in the room to help you analyze. Making small changes every quarter yields big results.

6. Multimedia: Is podcasting in your future? Video? Virtual events? Webinars? Yes, the field is cluttered but here’s the thing: your audience, your market, your clients trust you. If you decide to build it, you don’t have to perform against the most popular content in the world, you only have to solve problems for your customers and share the magic. 

   • Starter Step: Meet with your team and ask the simple question: What is our multi-media strategy? Should we engage in a wider variety of marketing activities by considering media? 

   • Secret we discovered: Yes, it’s harder than it looks but easier than you think. Engage experts and share their secrets. You don’t need to have all the answers, but you can build a vast library of resources, one interview at a time.

7. CRM & Marketing Automation: For the longest time, CRM’s were the clunky, awkward stepchild of sales and marketing. Salespeople hated them because they were more work than worth, and marketing hated them because they were just another cumbersome tool. Sales are no longer driven by one personality but by teams. And CRM’s have become both powerful and lithe. Moreover, to advance (grow) the sales relationship of the digital-first buyer, they are no longer optional. 

   • Starter Step: Like your ops, systems are too easy to delay. If you haven’t implemented a CRM for your org, do it now. For starters, read our post Marketing > Sales (Is Your Sales Team Even Relevant Anymore?)

   • Tools we like: Start with commonsku (yes, shameless plug), why? It’s an entire ecosystem baked into a collaborative team tool and if needed, advance to Hubspot. 

   • Secret we’ve discovered: If social media and content reflect the heart and mission of your brand, CRM and marketing automation is the brain. Information is power and the more power you give your team, the more they will fuel your success.

A few pillars for lead-gen that we didn’t cover because they are not technically digital: referrals (you are asking for referrals each time you deliver a miracle order, right?), cross-pollinating projects (building one solution for one customer and sharing that project with your other customers), and inspirational self-promo (which should be woven into the fabric of virtually everything listed above, more on that later). In a future post, we’ll also cover a checklist of website essentials that will help amp your efforts above. 

One more thing … 

… and it’s the most important. Glancing at the list above, you might now have added “marketing anxiety” to your supply chain anxiety, but hear us on this one: Marketing is a marathon. It’s one step at a time. Pace yourself. Create an annual plan to adopt each of the pillars above. There are no diet pills in marketing, you get lean and powerful, one workout at a time. 

Don’t let the coming wave overwhelming you, make changes to your marketing now so you can ride the wave when this new surge hits our shores!