Are your technology PR efforts paying off? This guide helps B2B marketers identify the right metrics to prove their impact on business goals and revenue. By Allison Mattina, Client Services Director
Use B2B Tech Marketing to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
As B2B tech companies navigate the post-pandemic marketplace, the need for robust marketing is indisputable. High inflation makes buyers more discerning. The best tools for B2B tech companies to build resilience are strategic digital marketing and technical communication. This helps build loyalty as well as enduring non-transactional relationships between brands and their buyers. Integrated marketing is a lifeline for recovery and growth that holds the power to drastically curtail the sales cycles.
Improve the bottom line with B2B tech marketing
To accelerate the journey from prospect to happy customer, you must know your audience. A well-crafted marketing message that cuts through the noise of a bustling marketplace is derived from buyer persona research that includes one-on-one interviews with past decision makers. The buyer is the best source of insight into their pain points, frustrations, aspirations, and needs. And yet, sales and marketing teams often make big decisions about what buyers want and need without speaking to any of them.
Armed with buyer persona research, the next step is to determine which marketing strategies align with your solution, message, and position in the marketplace. There is no one-size-fits-all formula. For example, take the enterprise software giants Salesforce and SAP. They target a similar buyer audience in the CRM software space and position themselves as thought leaders but take different approaches. Salesforce emphasizes innovation, community building, and social responsibility, while SAP highlights its comprehensive solutions, industry-specific expertise, and global market leadership. Both generate awareness and build trust with potential buyers using content marketing and digital marketing for tech, but their messages are tweaked to suit their particular marketing strategies.
Build awareness and trust along the buyers’ journey
In-depth persona research unlocks the secrets of the sales cycle and highlights how B2B tech marketers can genuinely build trust with buyers. Successful B2B tech marketing campaigns nurture leads with valuable content that fills knowledge gaps and smoothly moves prospects through each stage of the buyers’ journey. B2B tech marketing requires expertise to map the sales funnel as well as empathy to identify content opportunities that resonate with each intended audience. Effective B2B lead generation builds trust and guides decision-makers through pain points and addresses technical complexity along the way.
Content, such as case studies and testimonials placed at strategic junctures in the buyers’ journey, adds credibility and fuels awareness on a wider scale, through technology public-relations tactics, for example. Contributed articles expand the visibility of your company. Article placement in a relevant tech industry publication amplifies the reach of your message and inspires organic sharing among decision makers. Clever companies understand that the sophistication of their solution includes how well it is framed and presented to perceptive buyers—especially engineers.
Make it easy for prospects to engage
Once you have captured the eyes and attention of the industry, make sure you are easy to contact and that your website is fully optimized. Search engine optimization (SEO) delivers more potential buyers, and a logical, intuitive website flow can deliver qualified leads that delight sales staff. When sales and marketing teams work in tandem, they eliminate silos that undermine lead generation and instead create a shared understanding of key messages, target audiences, and content tailored to the specific needs of their B2B tech buyers. This alignment allows B2B marketing teams to adjust to real-time feedback from the sales frontlines quickly.
Speaking of the frontlines, events—virtual or in-person—are tremendous opportunities to generate leads but follow up is often overlooked or weakly executed. Proactive and strategic post-event outreach nurtures leads and ensures that the momentum generated from (often expensive) industry events is sustained and integrated into the overall sales and marketing strategy. Timely, relevant follow-up encourages stronger relationships with leads and further expedites the sales cycle. With marketing efforts aligned with sales objectives and fluid collaboration between sales and marketing teams, you are more likely to generate qualified leads.
Move the needle with B2B tech audiences
A deliberate strategy, informed by meticulous one-on-one buyer persona research, unlocks access to your ideal audience and delivers the right messages to capture and nurture their attention. As displayed by Salesforce and SAP, building trust and awareness, along with thoughtfully curated technical content, moves the needle with B2B tech audiences in a crowded, competitive space.
Additionally, the close alignment of sales and marketing teams, combined with proactive post-event execution, accelerates the sales cycle. Sales staff can perform at their peak when robust marketing efforts support them and deliver the right set of buyers. HCI’s B2B tech marketing services help companies successfully navigate the complexities of today’s—and tomorrow’s—B2B tech marketplace, shorten the sales cycle, and connect with buyers.
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HCI has marketing professionals in North America and Europe.
HCI has marketing professionals in North America and Europe.