What is Demand Capture?

A powerful tool for B2B marketers and sales teams, demand capture is a method of understanding who your ideal customers are, what they need, and how to target them. Believe it or not, roughly 79% of all marketing leads never convert into sales opportunities. Why? Because too often, brands focus their attention on the wrong people.

Instead of targeting those most likely to convert, they focus on those who are the easiest to get in front of. This is problematic for several reasons, the biggest of which is that it results in low conversions, impacting your bottom line. 

Instead of attempting to reach a broader audience, you need to narrow your focus to target only those who are ready to buy – that’s where demand capture comes into play. 

What is Demand Capture in Marketing?

Demand capture is a method of leveraging data and insights to identify prospects ready to convert into customers. It involves analyzing intent data to find those most likely to convert and then creating targeted campaigns tailored to their needs.

Is There a Difference Between Demand Capture and Demand Generation?

Yes. In a nutshell, demand generation focuses on building demand for your products or services, whereas demand capture is a strategy for actually converting those leads into customers. They’re two halves of the same process.

Source: Taikun Digital

How Does Demand Capture Work?

While approximately 91% of marketers say that lead generation is their top priority, only about 3% of your market is actively buying, with another 56% saying they’re not ready to buy. That means you need to be proactive in identifying who those 3% of buyers are so you can target them with the right information to convince them that you’re the answer to their problem.

The end goal of demand capture is to capture the attention of that small percentage of buyers who are actively looking for a solution to their problem and persuade them to buy from you. The only way to do that is through intent data. 

Intent data helps you understand your customers’ and prospects’ underlying motivations, needs, and interests. It’s collected from various sources, including web search activity, social media interactions, and email exchanges. By analyzing this data, you can uncover insights that can help you tailor your messaging to meet your customers’ needs better. 

Here are some ways you can collect intent data:

  • Use advanced analytics tools that track and analyze user behavior on your website.
  • Use user behavior data to create personas and identify the types of customers you want to target.
  • Use keyword research to uncover trends in search terms that can help you better understand your customers’ interests. 
  • Analyze the conversations and interactions of your customers on various social media platforms to gain valuable insights into their interests, needs, and preferences. 

While demand capture seems like it could be the perfect solution to your marketing challenges, it has its drawbacks, which is why it’s essential to understand the pros and cons of this approach. 

Advantages of Demand Capture

In addition to better understanding customer needs, demand capture can do the following:

  • Help businesses identify new opportunities for growth. By collecting data on customer behavior and interests, companies can uncover trends in search terms and identify new markets to explore. 
  • Personalize customer experiences. By collecting data on customer behavior and interests, businesses can tailor customer messages and offers based on their individual preferences. This can help increase engagement and customer loyalty, resulting in higher conversion rates and improved customer retention. 

Disadvantages of Demand Capture

Some of the disadvantages of demand capture are:

  • Can be costly and time-consuming. It requires businesses to invest in technology and resources to track necessary customer data, which can add up over time. Additionally, it can be difficult to interpret this data and make sense of it to make informed decisions.
  • Can be seen as intrusive. By collecting customer data, businesses can gain access to personal information that customers may want to keep private. This can lead to privacy concerns and prevent customers from interacting with the company. One recent example of this was the debate over the death of third-party cookies in the online advertising industry. While many would argue that these cookies were intrusive and an invasion of privacy, others believed they were essential for the industry’s success. 
  • Can be unreliable. It relies on customers providing accurate and honest information, which may not always be the case. Additionally, customer behavior can vary widely, making it difficult to predict and analyze customer trends accurately.

4 Demand Capture Methods That Work

Demand capture may seem a bit daunting initially, especially if you’ve never given it much thought. The good news? You’ve probably already been implementing some of the most common demand capture methods without even realizing it. 

Here are four of the most common demand capture methods that can help you make more sales and retain more customers:

1. Personalize Your Website for Your Ideal Customer Profile

Personalizing your website according to your ideal customer profile can help you create a personalized experience for your customers, making them feel like their needs are being met and valued. This can increase customer loyalty and engagement, with research proving that your customers are more influenced by brands that make them feel valued, appreciated, and respected. 

2. Build a Positive Reputation

Another demand capture tactic you may already be implementing is creating a positive brand reputation via social media, customer review sites, and forums. Positive word of mouth goes a long way in capturing the attention of your target market. 

Studies show that 90% of all buyers are more likely to convert after reading positive reviews, with 92% of B2B buyers taking it a step further, saying they’re more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review. 

These reviews can come from just about anywhere. Buyers are more likely to trust a brand that has positive reviews from multiple sources, including customer reviews and reviews from well-known review sites. 

Source: G2

3. Paid Search Campaigns

With paid search campaigns, you can target specific customers based on the keywords they use, their demographic information, or even their location. This allows you to reach a highly targeted audience, ensuring that those who are already searching for the solutions you have to offer are seeing your message. 

4. Use Intent Data for Retargeting

Finally, demand capture allows you to take the intent data you’re already collecting and use it for retargeting. Retargeting allows you to stay in front of your audience and remind them of your brand and the services you have to offer. This can be done through display ads, social media, or even email campaigns. 

Demand Capture Made Simple with Hushly

Demand capture is an integral part of an effective marketing strategy, as it provides brands with valuable customer information to help them better understand their needs and preferences. However, it can be difficult to accurately predict and analyze customer trends.

That’s where Hushly can help. Our demand capture tools help ensure that brands can get the most out of their efforts and turn them into success.

Ready to see how demand capture can help your business? Request your demo today. 

15 B2B Growth Metrics Marketers Should Track

A growing business is proof that your practices are working. It keeps you healthy and competitive, encourages investors, and gives you time to identify problems and build solutions to create even more value and growth.

Yet it’s not always easy to tell how quickly your company is growing, or even why. How can you separate your company from the ebbs and flows of the market, customer demand, and the performance of your competitors to generate an accurate picture of your growth?

Welcome to the world of B2B growth metrics.

We’ve compiled this list of some of the most important B2B growth metrics you can track and ways to calculate them.

Measuring B2B Marketing Effectiveness

B2B success is not different from success at other companies. It requires growth, which means you’ll always be looking out for new customers who spend more than your old ones.

You’ll need to know how much it costs to acquire new prospects and how long it will take them to become buyers. You’ll also need to know whether it’s time to focus more on market share or if you can safely enjoy a wave of category growth.

The best way to measure growth is with some key metrics that we’ll recommend today. First, you should understand the importance of category growth and why it should affect the way you read your growth metrics.

Category Growth Metrics vs. B2B Growth Metrics

Category growth is the phenomenon of increasing demand in the category of products you sell. For example, a company that makes bowling balls might take a particular interest in increasing the popularity of the game of bowling to unlock new customers and new revenue streams.

This is in contrast to a company that only advertises to current bowlers and doesn’t try to convert new ones. The first company is engaging in category growth tactics, while the second isn’t.

Why Category Growth Matters

In general, pursuing a category growth strategy is a luxury. But knowing how to track category growth is fundamental.

If your company is growing quickly, but more slowly than others in your industry, you may have a problem competing with these companies when your market is mature (i.e., it stops growing so much).

Tracking your category growth can tell you whether you should be focusing on competition or growth.

5 Metrics to Track Category Growth

Here are five metrics to check on B2B growth vs. category growth.

1. Share of Voice

Share of voice is a very popular public relations metric. It essentially tracks how frequently your brand is mentioned in relation to other brands. If your share of voice is falling despite rising revenues, this may mean you’re experiencing a boom in category growth but falling behind in the competition.

2. Web Traffic vs. Competition

Another way to measure yourself against your competitors is to check on web traffic. How often are customers finding and choosing your content over others? Branded web searches is a similar metric that can be used to find the same information.

3. Backlinks

Backlinks are other websites linking to yours. A high number of backlinks can indicate domain authority and mean that your brand is outperforming others when it comes to brand awareness and reputation.

4. Social Media Followers and Engagement vs. Competition

Once again, if you’re experiencing lots of growth in this area, it’s important to see how well your competitors are faring. The speed of your growth vs. theirs is ultimately what will matter most.

5. Category Sales and Revenue

The most direct way to track category growth is by combining the sales and revenue of all companies in your sector. How quickly is your revenue growing in comparison? This insight can be a valuable indicator of how your company is performing relative to competition.

5 Best Forward-Looking Sales Metrics

These five sales growth metrics are the best way to measure the performance of your sales team, which should directly correlate to your growth.

6. Close Rate

The close rate is the percentage of leads converted into sales. It can be contentious because salesmen will naturally believe that if they didn’t close a sale, it wasn’t closeable. Often, they are right! This means that the close rate is not just a measure of sales performance but marketing as well.

7. Total Sales

You won’t find a KPI that more straightforwardly represents sales performance on a year-to-year or month-to-month basis than a B2B sales report.

8. Pipeline Velocity

How quickly are customers being pulled through the B2B marketing funnel? The more efficient the process of contacting, engaging, and converting customers is, the easier it will be for your company to scale.

9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is a measure of how much money was spent turning a prospect into a customer. This is the best metric for determining the ROI of your sales team. It may also be an indirect reflection of lead quality.

10. Sales by Product, Region, or Category

It’s important to parse data to make it more useful. Knowing that your total sales are growing is useful, but what if that growth is mainly driven by a rise in demand in a particular region or for a particular product? Knowing sales by product, region, or category allows you to leverage it to drive growth even further.

5 Best B2B Growth Metrics

These are the metrics we recommend checking to see how your company is growing.

11. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Recurring revenue is a prediction based on how much subscription-based revenue you expect to earn. You generally calculate ARR by first finding your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and multiplying it by 12. Your churn rate will affect your ARR and MRR.

12. Churn Rate

Churn is the loss of customers due to failure to renew subscriptions. It’s a direct measure of how useful customers determine your product to be once they’ve used it.

A high churn rate could be cause for concern. You won’t get 2nd chances with most customers, so it’s important to keep churn manageable.

13. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You measure net promoter score by simply asking customers to rank their likelihood of recommending your product on a scale of 1 to 10.

NPS is simple yet highly valuable. It directly predicts growth, since those who answer with high scores are very likely to recommend you to others. A high NPS score essentially correlates to how much of this free advertising you’re getting.

14. Average Deal Size

This can be measured by individual deals or by specifying a period of time. In the latter case, it’s akin to MRR/ARR. This is a great metric to track when going to market.

15. Average Sales Cycle

You want to know how long it takes to engage with prospects, turn them into buyers, and do it all over again. A long sales cycle is not necessarily a problem as long as it works for your industry. It may also ebb and flow during certain times of the year. You’ll need to pay close attention to this metric over a long period of time.

Product Analytics for B2B Growth is Easy with Hushly

Hushly’s automated customer experience platform collects data from every phase of the customer journey. We use this data to generate important insights that you can use to contribute to the growth of your business.

If you’re interested in a marketing partner ready and able to scale alongside you, contact our team and request a Hushly demo today.

How to Convert More B2B Buyers with Web Content Personalization

It’s not getting any easier for marketers without web content personalization partners to generate high-quality content that resonates with users.

Innovations like adaptive content hubs, content algorithms, and modern SEO practices mean that buyers have an easy time finding information on just about any subject they want to research. This is great for the average buyer, but an overabundance of information can lead to decision paralysis. It also makes it far more likely that below-par, non-personalized content will be ignored in favor of higher-quality options.

This combination of factors creates an environment where only the sharpest content can cut through the information overload. This means well-conceived and executed content, personalized for the buyers who matter most to your company’s growth.

Optimizing your web content personalization is the theme of today’s guide. We’ll explain the concept of personalized web content, why you should care about it, and suggest a few ways you can begin the process of personalizing web content today.

What is Web Content Personalization?

Web content personalization is a marketing strategy that involves tailoring web content to individual buyers. This is generally done by gathering information about the user, starting with things like how that user found the content, and slightly altering your website content to closely match their unique perspective.

In other words, web content personalization is the natural next step after recognizing that B2B buyers, like B2C customers, are individuals with unique concerns, needs, and buy thresholds. B2B buyers are also more likely to perform more research and demand more when it comes to features, availability, and customer service.

Non-personalized content is the way to deliver value to any customer who finds their way onto your website. Personalized content is a step above this, as it tries to deliver unique value to specific customers that your company hopes to form relationships with.

How Do I Personalize My Web Content?

Web personalization tools like Hushly are the best way to personalize web content.

However, if you prefer to do it alone and are interested in some of the best website personalization examples, we recommend starting with these steps.

Create Personas

The process of creating a website personalization strategy should begin with finding the targets of your personalization.

One of the most redeeming aspects of B2B website personalization is the fact that you can invest relatively little time and resources and potentially see a massive return.

You can begin by identifying several promising B2B candidate buyers and creating buyer personas for them. Use these personas to develop a unique strategy for engaging with that buyer. You should focus on details like the company’s niche, its pain points and growth engines, and ways your company can add value to its operation and aid in its growth.

Once you know what message you’re going with, you can start the process of customizing web content based on that campaign and targeting your ideal buyers.

Create Personalized Websites

A personalized website should speak directly to your target audience. This includes major details such as page names, text, and recommended content. These factors should be individualized, addressing the company or even the buyer directly. Letting the company know you’re aware of its place in the ecosystem and may already understand its issue can build trust.

Hushly’s automated web content platform creates dynamic experiences that can be personalized using any element of a webpage, including self-updating text, banners, calls to action, and more.

Use Self-Nurturing Landing Pages

Buyers should find content and educational materials with ease, directly from their personalized landing page. B2B buyers expect to browse your content at their own pace and in a way that makes sense to them. This is only possible when you combine powerful AI analytics with valuable buyer intent data to create truly personalized experiences.

Create an Adaptive Content Hub

Content hubs are places where users can find all of your content at once. They are important because users expect to find your content easily and on their schedule.

An adaptive content hub is the next generation of content hubs. It’s where developers use algorithms to optimize what content is displayed depending on the visitor. This makes it possible to recommend only the most relevant, conversion-driving content your website has to offer to the right buyer at the right time.

Gather Data and Refine

Gathering data is important every step of the way. The more you know about your customer’s behavior, the more you can predict their needs and provide valuable services.

You’ll want to know details like:

  • Content performance
  • Content engagement metrics
  • Conversion analytics
  • Trends and campaign performance

Hushly’s automated web platform is the best way to perfect your content strategy with data-driven analytics and modern AI solutions.

Why is Web Content Personalization Important?

As advancements in AI content generation, marketing, and distribution continue to roll out year after year, the face of content marketing is likely to change.

Buyers are savvy researchers with limited amounts of time. Why should they spend that time searching through a non-adaptive content hub, or hope they’ll skim the right headline if they scroll far enough through a blog page?

Just like in the past, it was once enough to simply create content and wait for buyers to find it. The day has come when it’s no longer enough to create content and hope that buyers don’t expect it to be accessible, valuable, and personalized.

Modern Website Personalization is Critical for Go-to-Market Strategies

Modern go-to-market strategies need to be flexible, durable, and constantly open to refinement. Website personalization is just the latest in a long list of things that go-to-market strategies require to perform well.

If you’re planning on launching a product, you’ve probably already identified an ideal buyer for that product before you began developing it. Why spend the time and effort developing a product to help a business grow, only to neglect to personalize their marketing content when you decide on your go-to-market strategy?

The Benefits of Web Content Personalization

The benefits of web content personalization include:

  • Better content engagement
  • Higher conversions
  • Better customer satisfaction
  • More repeat customers compared to non-personalized content.

A personalized content hub, with smart AI analytics to optimize the feed, will recommend the most relevant content to your most valuable buyers. This is because these buyers are three times more likely to buy more and regret less when information about a product or service is readily available.

There’s also the fact that 43% of B2B customers prefer to not interact with a sales rep at all. This means that, in many cases, the only opportunity you’ll have to educate and convert a customer is through your content marketing.

Personalization is Easy with Hushly

Personalization is simply one more step on the road to perfecting your content strategy.

If you feel you’d rather have an experienced web personalization specialist take on the stress of web content personalization for you, Hushly is ready to partner with you and grow together.

Ready to begin the process of personalizing your web content with an experienced partner? Try Hushly.

What is a B2B Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy?

Broadly, go-to-market (GTM) refers to the act of bringing a new revenue-generating business practice to the right buyers.

In other words, GTM is the motion of your entire company (or at least the marketing and sales teams) when introducing a new product.

Naturally, there are many moving parts during this. The best GTM strategies match the level of complexity with a level of flexibility and resiliency. A great GTM strategy will bend but not break under the internal and external pressure of introducing a new product to the market.

More than just a strategy for one particular product, a GTM is also a philosophy and a distinct way of organizing your employees into a structure that best suits the needs of your upcoming product launch.

GTM is a complicated subject, so today’s blog will cover just what you need to know to get started on creating a GTM of your own.

What is GTM in B2B?

A GTM is not a single, one-off marketing or sales strategy for a single product launch.

Instead, you should imagine your GTM motion as the form your company takes when it’s about to launch a certain product or revenue source.

This form will need to be malleable to adapt to the needs of each individual launch. On top of this, your GTM needs to be structured in a way that holds employees responsible from the top down.

Ultimately, your GTM should be:

  • A repeatable and iterative process for revenue source introductions.
  • Scalable. In fact, a strong GTM may even answer the question of how to scale your business.
  • A cultural force for your employees to rally around.

Types of GTM Motions

Before we get into the motions, let’s briefly mention the three main parts of a GTM: strategy, planning, and execution.

Each product launch will necessitate different strategies, planning, and execution, as well as a unique mixture of each.

Start by considering how you intend to bring your product to market. Is sales leading the charge with outbounds? Or are you taking a more subtle approach and looking to integrate with partners and scale alongside the ecosystem?

Here are three examples of GTM motion types and how the planning, strategy, and execution look for each one.

Inbound-Led

  • Strategy: Utilize content marketing to drive traffic to conversion channels.
  • Planning: Since this is a fairly traditional strategy, your organization shouldn’t need to move too much to accommodate it. Still, all players with skin in the game need to be involved in the strategy session. This means having sales and marketing together with senior leadership determine what success looks like before any decisions are finalized.
  • Execution: Your marketing team will generate and capture demand with high-quality content. MQLs will be forwarded to sales for outbound follow-up.

Category-Led

  • Strategy: Become a category leader by introducing a new movement or idea that’s meant to transform the marketplace.
  • Planning: Generating an idea or concept on this level takes decades of experience and knowledge. If your leadership team has something they think can truly change things, it’s time to figure out how to tell people about it.
  • Execution: You’ll need to establish the credibility of an industry leader. Results are king here – legions of happy customers will be all the proof you need.

Product-Led

  • Strategy: Let the quality of your product be the loudest voice in the customer’s head. If you have something customers don’t think they can live without, you’ve got a source of revenue and an invaluable business partnership.
  • Planning: Your product should be made from the ground up to influence customers. A combination of free and paid features can help here – customers will stick around if value is being provided for nothing in return.
  • Execution: It’s so good that users will naturally spend the time to experience the product and use it to facilitate further deals and feature discovery. Sales and marketing should be on hand ready to take advantage of the demand your product will generate for itself.

4 Go-To-Market Strategy Tips

Here are a few tips when creating a GTM strategy from scratch.

1. Resist the Urge to Assign a Single Owner

It’s tempting to eliminate the possibility of “too many cooks in the kitchen” by assigning a single employee to hold responsible for the GTM. We believe this is a mistake.

It’s more important that the entire organization feels the pressure of accountability. Naturally, since more people are involved and being held responsible, there are more angles to consider and more employees to keep happy.

However, this increase in the challenge of people management should be offset by the increased synchronicity of your operation.

2. Be Comfortable Introducing New Roles and Responsibilities

It’s not necessary to change your entire org chart every time you launch a new product. But it is critically important that employees on all levels get comfortable with slightly different roles regularly.

The more each employee knows about how to operate in diverse roles, the easier it will be for them to adapt under pressure. This kind of adaptability is exactly what a strong GTM motion should aim for.

3. Emphasize the Team Nature of GTM

Business is a team game. GTM, being one of the most important aspects of your business, is the ultimate teambuilding tool.

Look at your upcoming GTM motion as an opportunity for your business to prove it belongs. Each employee in your organization should be involved in and aware of the strategy and what they’re expected to contribute. Motivating employees is its own challenge, but you can start by emphasizing the unique nature of the situation (a product launch) from the top down.

4. Choose One Strategy and Stick to It

When faced with such a large decision, it can be difficult to even begin searching for the correct path. This problem will only be exacerbated when you’re involving so many employees from disparate areas of your company, each of whom will bring unique concerns and perspectives.

Don’t fall for the trap of assuming you can perfect a GTM in a board room.

Avoid decision paralysis. Don’t worry about if your GTM motion is perfect – because it isn’t! No plan ever is. Instead of waiting around for the exact right moment, or for when you no longer feel any anxiety or uncertainty about your plan, pick a path and stick to it.

You can and will adapt on the fly as issues arise.

What is a Good B2B GTM Strategy?

Every great GTM strategy should be distinct from all the ones used before it.

The simple reason for this is that no two companies, let alone product launches, are ever the same. No two moments in time can be directly compared. No material conditions are ever identical. Your GTM strategy should follow this principle as well. Bruce Lee once observed that water takes the shape of any container it enters, yet is never anything other than water.

Your GTM strategy should be like water: true to itself but adaptable enough to generate solutions to problems in real time and ultimately take whatever shape is needed to drive growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, Hushly’s Efficient Growth at Scale eBook contains even more information on creating GTM strategies at any scale.

Marketing Pillars of Efficient Growth at Scale

To create an efficient growth model you need to develop a repeatable, scalable motion. And know your ‘Why’. Why should your buyers care about your company? Why did you create this product and what problems does it solve? Understanding your ‘Why’ will be the catalyst to your entire go-to-market strategy. 

Luckily, marketers have started to see a shift in growth at all costs to efficient growth based on data-driven, scalable marketing. There are big trends in the market supporting this shift — most of which focus on how to drive predictable pipeline and revenue generation with the adoption of technology, data, and prioritization of the buyer’s experience.

Source: GTM Partners

The key to driving efficient growth is to orchestrate well-timed and personalized experiences that meet the needs of the prospective buyer – where they are in their journey – reduce friction and build relationships. There are two key marketing pillars required to drive efficient growth: content and experience. Read on to see exactly why without investment in these two areas it will be tough to develop a repeatable, scalable motion.

Pillar 1: Content 

66% of marketers
are devoting more budget and resources to content
this year than the last – according to HubSpot.

Content is more imperative than ever. And you need to have it for every stage of the buyer journey. But, your content can’t just be content for the sake of content. You need to establish the right message for the right people at each stage of the buyer’s journey that maps back to your “Why”. 

Gartner does a great job illustrating how complex the B2B buyer’s journey is and why you need to ensure you have the right content to answer questions across every channel and stage. In fact, the research found that customers who perceived the information they received from suppliers to be helpful were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.

source: Gartner

There are three core components to developing a content strategy that drives efficient growth. 

Step 1: Identify topics and keywords

Understand what your audience cares about by looking at the data. What are they searching for at each stage that’s relevant to your “Why”. It’s really important to dig into keywords you are tracking and prioritizing. Your keywords will be used for several things like, capturing intent data, SEO strategy, and ultimately developing your content pillars. Remember the old adage “Crap-in, crap out”? Well it definitely holds true here, so take the time to get your keywords right!

  • What words, phrases etc. Start by thinking about what you’d seach for if you were one of your persona’s
  • Interview customers and talk to other people your company
  • Once you get a long list, do some research to see what you’re missing.

Step 2: Establish content pillars

Leveraging intent data provides great insight into what your target accounts are interested in, especially in relation to your product and solution offerings. If you don’t have an intent data provider, no problem! Go back to your keyword list and make some assumptions based on what you know. You could also try a free tool or Google Search Console to see what keywords users used to get to your website.

source: Hushly

Once you know your top keywords and topics you need to tie them back to your product and value prop and establish “Content Pillars” or themes.

source: Hushly

In this example, you can see that the organization offers B2B growth marketing solutions, and that their target accounts are showing intent for keywords such as ‘B2B Growth’ and ‘Marketing Growth.’ Do this exercise for your business and develop pillars that can support both your inbound and ABM strategies.

Step 3: Create a content matrix

Now that you have your content pillars you will need to map out the different types of content you need for each stage in the buyer’s journey, personas, and channels.

source: Hushly

Pro Tip: Most content can be turned into multiple formats with varying degrees
of depth according to the persona and stage in the buyers journey.

Hopefully, you have existing content ou can leverage, but now is a good time to inventory what you have and find the gaps you have. A lot of businesses tend to have more top of funnel content but not enough for the mid and bottom of funnel. 

The best thing about having a content matrix is when you are planning marketing campaigns you can easily pull it up to see what you have to leverage and where you need to make more investments. 

Pillar 2: Experience 

“To put it bluntly, if a buyer doesn’t like the way you
interact with them, they will go somewhere else.”
– Sangram Vajre, Founder at GTM Partners

Every step in your buyer’s journey is an opportunity to delight your prospects and make doing business with you a pleasure. That’s why it’s so important to examine each step and think about how you can better enable your buyers. Where are the points of friction and how can you alleviate them? Make every interaction

purposeful and as frictionless as possible!

The best way to understand what experiences you need is to map the content you have to the touchpoints and channels you plan to deliver it on. This should allow you to easily identify what experience you need to build.

source: Hushly

Then from there, you should look to the following areas to improve the experience.

  1. Use intent data.
    In order to understand what your audience is looking for and what buying stage they are in you need to know what they are doing behind the scenes. 
  2. Inspect what you expect.
    All of your paid and earned channels should be driving your audience to your website. Evaluate what your audience is seeing when they get there.
  3. Create dynamic landing pages.
    Using the content matrix and taxonomy you developed plus advanced technology like Hushly, you can dynamically serve up a content experience that is highly relevant to your audience.
  4. Ungate content & utilize smart forms.
    These days, most of your content should be UNgated! Be sure to consider the type of content you are publishing before putting it behind a form. If you do have to use a form don’t ask for information you don’t need. 
  5. Be sticky!
    After you’ve done all the hard work of getting someone to your landing page keep them there! Perscribe content to read next and answer questions on the spot with live chat. Make sure people are finding what they are looking for and more when they are there.

We know it can be intimidating to put together an experience that is both repeatable and scalable. The good news is, there is technology and data to support us in making it happen. As we think about the buying experience, we like to design always-on programs that are in sync with your buyers needs. 

It is our job as marketers and sales teams to meet potential buyers where they are in their journey with helpful, relevant information. Leverage content and reduce friction to make it easy for buyers to discover what they need to make an informed buying decision.

source: Hushly ABM Experience

By leveraging tools like Demandbase, RollWorks, 6Sense Zoominfo or Bombora for intent data and buyer experience and conversion platforms like Hushly you can dynamically personalize your website, ABM pages, and campaign destinations in real-time. You can personalize things like:

  • Showing target account logos
  • Copy and graphics
  • Videos 
  • Swap out content by persona, account, industry, etc.
  • Providing the right account reps contact info
  • Messaging by stage of the journey

Investing in the experience does require the right resources and technology. But once you have it in place, you really can build a single page and scale it to thousands of your target accounts. This is really where you start to see efficiencies in your marketing efforts. 

Pulling it all together

Using the right technology coupled with a strong content strategy allows you to create a relevant, and scalable content

experience that will both educate and move prospects along in the buyer’s journey faster and more efficiently.

Without a content strategy and the right technology, the chances of a disconnected and inconsistent experience are high. However, when creating a content strategy, the tendency of many businesses is to create a lot of content and put it all out there (behind a gate) for prospects to consume after they give you their contact information.  And then send a BDR, or Sales Executive after them to try and get a meeting. This experience creates low conversion rates, missed revenue targets, and poor brand perception.

Increasingly, we are learning that prospects are looking to simply figure out how to do things better, and get results. They buy products with the result in mind. They do research to uncover what their options are and how they work. They are pulled in many directions so when it’s hard to find what they are looking for they will bounce and go somewhere else.

Marketing teams that create meaningful, personalized content experiences, in a repeatable, scalable way – will win the hearts, minds, and wallets of the customer. It’s time to create a better buying experience in the name of efficient growth!

How to Do B2B Keyword Research That Brings Leads

You plan your B2B marketing content carefully to add value to the lives of your clients, inform customers about new or upgraded products, and direct prospects to your sales teams to close the deals. But does your B2B marketing content generate leads with a coherent strategy based on strong B2B keyword research?

According to Baclinko, 99% of clicks are on the first page of search engine results. The top 3 results by themselves see more than 50% combined clicks.

All of this means that your B2B keywords are extremely important to your organic search results.

Today’s guide will give you a brief overview of keywords, how they apply to B2B customers, and some actionable tips on how to choose the right keyword for your content strategy.

What is a B2B Keyword?

When we refer to keywords, we’re talking about the language you focus on when creating and marketing your content. Your favored keywords should appear in multiple diverse places on your website.

B2B keywords are unique because B2B clients use different languages and have a different philosophy compared to B2C clients.

A B2C client has the license to be compulsive. They don’t need to consider as many variables before making a purchase decision. This psychological mindset is radically different from a B2B buyer, who has to balance the needs of the entire company against their personal preferences.

All of this means that B2B buyers will be more thorough in their research. Their use of keywords will be savvier, and they’ll have spent enough time sorting through lots of content to know what’s useful to their research and what isn’t.

The B2B content marketer’s job is to anticipate what their ideal client is going to be searching for, so the right content is ready to go when the buyer needs it.

How Do You Do B2B Keyword Research?

There are a few methods for finding great B2B keywords. If you’ve never done it before, it might help to take a look at some of the internet’s most popular B2B keywords, for example, this list put together by Mondovo.

Before you start creating content based on the world’s highest performing keywords, keep in mind that ranking for these keywords will be very challenging, if not impossible, regardless of the quality of your content. The simple fact is that the higher a keyword ranks, the more likely it is that someone has already produced the content you would like to make for that subject.

Instead, go through the list for an example of the kind of language and questions that B2B clients are asking.

Put Yourself in the Buyer’s Shoes

Try putting on your client hat for a moment and research as though you had no idea your company existed. Take on the persona of one of your ideal clients. This can be a real buyer or a fictional one that checks all your boxes. The important thing is that you’re becoming your own ideal customer to determine what information they want and how best to deliver it to them.

What kinds of questions would you be asking yourself? Keep in mind that these questions and concerns will change as you get further in the process. Your initial question may be so broad that it immediately spawns several smaller and more specific questions. This is the crux of keyword research: unfolding a broader topic until you find a question that hasn’t been answered well.

Use Automated Tools

Once you get a long list of possible keywords, we recommend you use some online tools to find even better keywords that you can rank for quickly.

  • Semrush and Spyfu are domain search tools that allow you to input a URL and explore that site’s keyword ranking information. This is extremely useful for analyzing competitors’ keyword usage as well as identifying possible ranking opportunities.
  • Semrush also offers a keyword gap tool that helps you compare your keyword usage to your competitors.
  • Keyword Hero is another online tool that helps you understand what keywords are leading customers to your content.

Is SEO Effective for B2B?

SEO techniques are based on the marketing community’s understanding of search engine algorithms. Their usefulness doesn’t depend on the subject being searched for. Since most research by B2B clients will be done using the internet and various search engines, applying SEO keyword philosophy to your content is the best way to increase organic search engine traffic.

If a customer is searching for a keyword that you’ve already written 10 blogs about, Google will see your website as more authoritative and comprehensive and rank your website higher as a result.

Focusing on certain keywords is a way to optimize your search engine rankings. SEO and SERP (search engine result pages) are seen by customers as organic and trustworthy. Your appearance high on the SERP will instantly build credibility for your brand.

What to Consider When Doing B2B Keyword Research for SEO

Knowing how to do the research is one thing, but how do you know you’ve found a promising keyword that could be the basis of a single piece of content? What about a keyword that your entire brand is built around?

The most important question when it comes to selecting keywords is how challenging it will be to rank for them.

Naturally, being at the top of the list for a search term with a five-figure monthly search volume is a home run. You’ll be swimming in clicks and the quality of your content will carry the day from there.

However, this is much easier said than done. Reaching the top of any keyword search result requires consistent quality content and authority that is generally built up for months or even years.

Instead of shooting right for the top, you should select keywords based on the following criteria:

Client Feedback

A great way to build a list of potential keywords is to get in touch with some of your important clients and ask them what kind of research they’re doing regularly. This is an extremely valuable insight that should apply to much more than just your keyword strategy.

Your Own Sales and Marketing Teams

Your own sales and marketing team will have important insights that you should farm for keyword ideas. They’ll have their own perspective on what kinds of information they wish was publicly available, as well as what kinds of feedback they get from clients and prospects.

Your Own Content

Use one of the automated tools above to analyze your own content as it currently exists.

What keywords are showing up regularly? How does your brand’s existing language rank on SERPs? Is there a coherent philosophy that you should add to? Or will you need to create an overarching keyword strategy from scratch?

Competitor’s Content

You should use the same tools to take a look at some of your competitors. This will give you a range of insights like how well you rank compared to them, as well as where the gaps in their content exist that you might fill.

Choose a Strategy for Long-Term Growth

There is no shortcut to the top. 94% of Google searchers immediately scroll past SERP advertisements.

If you want to rank in one of the coveted top three spots, which account for 68% of all SERP click-throughs, you’ll need time and dedication to crafting high-quality content that users engage with. You’ll need to accomplish this with an eye on the ever-changing keyword landscape.

Ideally, you’ll flesh out a list of frequent keywords that are highly relevant to your business and customers. Over time, with consistency and dedication, your odds of reaching the top will increase.

Check out Hushly’s Efficient Growth at Scale eBook for more tips on finding the right B2B keywords.

Mobile Customer Engagement: What It Is & Why It Matters

Let’s say you have a brother whose birthday is coming up, and you aren’t sure what gift to get.

You’re off work one evening and are scrolling Instagram on your phone when you come across an ad for a salt lamp that he’s been talking about getting for months. He’s already liked the post. It’s on sale.

The decision is almost too easy for you.

You click the ad, which takes you to a mobile-friendly site where you pick the item, enter your card information, and complete the transaction within a few minutes.

He loves the gift, and you love how little thought and effort it took to get it for him.

The theme of this story is convenience and timing.

If the company that sold you the lamp failed to engage with you as a mobile user adequately, either with non-mobile-friendly advertising or a site that wasn’t equipped with a mobile checkout interface, you wouldn’t have finished the purchase.

Instead, you’d have found a salt lamp from someone who knew what mobile customer engagement is and how to optimize it.

Today’s guide is all about helping you understand the importance of mobile engagement and simple tips on increasing your mobile customer engagement right now.

What is Mobile B2B Customer Engagement?

Mobile customer engagement is the companies’ effort to reach customers on mobile platforms like phones or tablets. In a B2B context, this could mean things like custom apps, push notifications, or text messages to key people inside your customer’s organization.

Mobile customer engagement can take many forms. Customer engagement aims to remove as many obstacles as possible from the purchasing decision.

Like your brother’s birthday story, opportunities must be capitalized on before losing them.

If a customer comes to you ready to spend money, you have to be prepared to take it from them no matter what form they’re handing it to you, or else they’ll find someone who will. This is the essence of mobile customer engagement.

Why Mobile Engagement Matters

Engagement is essential whether a customer is on their mobile device or not. Since 70% of users that visit your website will be on a desktop or laptop, it’s tempting to focus on them and ignore the rest.

However, failing to account for the 30% of website visitors who will be on their mobile devices is leaving too much on the table.

Just like with the content you produce and where you post it, there has to be an effort to meet customers on their level.

This means doing things like posting your content on the right platforms, at the right time, and in the case of mobile users, with the right combination of a custom app, notifications, mobile-friendly websites, or text messages.

Here are some key stats to convince you of the importance of mobile engagement:

  • According to Statista, there will be almost 7.5 billion mobile users by 2025.
  • 42% of mobile users will engage with content, compared to only 29% of other visitors.
  • 60% of Americans prefer to shop on their phone. This includes 84% of the population 18-34.

Your Website Must Have a Mobile UX

Customers, especially younger customers who are savvier with technology, can usually get by on a non-mobile interface.

If customers feel like they’re just getting by, they aren’t likely to tell their friends how easy and convenient it was to buy your product.

This is without mentioning the non-technology savvy customers who will probably just give up and look elsewhere to solve the problem.

Even if you complete the sale, the opportunity to provide a great customer experience—instead of just a mediocre one—could be lost countless times if you don’t meet the customer on their level. This means something as small as not having a mobile interface for your website could cost you big.

How to Increase Mobile Customer Engagement

Here are three simple ways to improve your mobile customer engagement overnight.

Improve Your Mobile Experience

Forget about having a mobile UX, which should be considered a bare minimum. Instead, you should ask yourself how to create the best mobile experience possible for every user across your website or product.

Is your mobile experience targeted to mobile users? Or does it exist just for the sake of it? Make your mobile users feel special; they’ll buy your product and then come back with their friends for more.

Consider the following factors of your mobile user experience:

  • Website and App Response Time: Nothing is worse than a slow, unresponsive, buggy, or featureless website or app that seems to take up space. An experience like this could turn a customer away for good.
  • Targeted Apps: Mobile apps that facilitate specific tasks like payments or reordering are popular because customers see them as convenient and trustworthy.
  • Mobile-Friendly Content: Your content should be organized in a way that is friendly to mobile users. Pop-out menus, portrait-style layouts, and reminders to share content through mobile apps should be the mainstays of your content web pages.

Mobile-Specific Promotions

You should woo mobile customers just like you would with any other, and in some cases, that could mean offering mobile-only promotions or deals to new users.

This rewards the existing mobile user base and incentivizes your non-mobile users to engage there.

Users engaging with your company on multiple platforms, like a mobile app and your website, will order more and return more frequently.

Personalize Your Mobile Experience

Tracking data through mobile apps and webpages is a great way to get to know your customers better and personalize their experience while on your site.

Knowing what your customers want is the first step to selling it to them.

In the example of the salt lamp, you could imagine a similar scenario, except that the salt lamp recommendation was based on your history on the vendor’s website.

These kinds of personalization will help you surprise the customer in good ways.

Hushly Can Help

If you’re looking to build a great, long-lasting, and versatile mobile engagement strategy and are still unsure where to start, it could be time to let Hushly take over for you.

Our mobile content platform is proven. For example, our personalized self-nurturing landing pages (SNLPs) outperform standard landing pages by 20% across mobile platforms in terms of conversions and by 31% in terms of customer engagement rate (i.e., likes, shares, comments, etc.).

B2B Customers Love Great Mobile Experiences, Too

B2B customers are humans, just like your B2C customers. They enjoy the simple convenience of opening their phone, completing their business within a few clicks, and moving on with their day feeling like they accomplished their goal.

Whether a customer is finding your website for the first time on their phone or has been around for a while and is back to browse, they will appreciate an excellent and targeted mobile experience.

The more ways you can find to improve this experience, the more you’ll generate customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and increased conversions.

Click here to see how Hushly can make managing your mobile B2B customer engagement strategy easy.

How Does B2B Personalization Differ from B2C?

In 2021, personalization takes no prisoners among consumer products:

  • Supplements and vitamins
  • Facewash and skincare
  • Workout routines
  • Oreos
  • Sneakers
  • Makeup pallets
  • Protein powders

You might say, “These are customized products themselves, not marketing. Plus, custom acne cleanser has nothing to do with B2B marketing.”

Don’t be so sure.

People expect personalization everywhere – and not just any personalization. They demand accurate personalization.

Look at it this way.

What’s better than receiving an email containing a full line of curated skincare products from different brands, all picked with love (from AI) based on your needs and buying behavior?

Well, customizing your own made-from-scratch skincare line, of course.

It’s only the logical next step after personalized marketing with curated content and products.

The marketing personalization technology came first and it’s no doubt directly to thank for the rise of completely customized everything in consumer products.

Your business buyers are the same person whether they’re discussing workplace productivity problems on a Zoom call or searching Pinterest for a natural supplement to relieve their inflammation.

Despite all the advancements, only 22% of consumers are happy with brand personalization.

B2Bs look about the same: Only 20% effectively personalize at scale despite 85% of buyers expecting it.

Now that we know how important personalization is and how poorly most brands are managing it, where do we go from here?

First, it’s critical to understand how B2B differs from B2C in terms of marketing personalization. This understanding will let you build on personalization’s core overlapping factors while adjusting the context for business.

How is B2B Personalization Similar to B2C?

The idea behind personalization is remarkably simple: People want relevant and useful things to either fix problems or improve their lives.

In that way, it’s easy to see how B2B vs. B2C personalization should follow the same strategy:

  • Finding the top priority or pain point to help their audience.
  • Choosing the best routes, tactics, and content to provide that help.
  • Leveraging data to understand your audience, what they need now, and how/where to help.

How Does B2B Personalization Differ from B2C?

Most B2Bs struggle with effective personalization due to the last point on the list above: data.

Low-quality, siloed, outdated, incomplete, and otherwise incorrect data is the number one killer of every personalization strategy.

This lack of data also leads to a general misunderstanding of how to use personalization in B2B. How can you personalize a website visitor’s experience if you used bad intel to create the content? You can’t.

Lots of B2B marketers also seem to be applying B2C journey characteristics to their B2B personalization.

Always start with what you know about your audience. Specifically, keep these key ideas in mind to understand how B2B differs from B2C marketing personalization.

Gartner

Consumer Journeys are Linear – Buyer Journeys are Anything But

Aside from a few outliers, customer journeys follow a specific linear progression. It’s even easier to map customer journeys within verticals and market segments.

The B2B journey is convoluted and impossible to predict. That’s why AI real-time personalization tools are critical.

Buyer Journeys Last Much Longer Than Consumer Journeys

Not only are they shorter but each B2C industry’s journey sticks to a uniform length – except for high-cost industries like leisure travel.

Buyer journeys can drag on for months – or even years – as stakeholders research. Your best chance at journey uniformity lies within individual companies and you’ll use account-based marketing to personalize.

B2B Personalization Targets Several People – B2C is Individual

Consumer brands might factor spouses into the deliberation process and even then, only for high-value items.

With B2B, even one-to-one ABM content must consider how the individual uses the product/service within a team context. You’re usually personalizing for groups instead.

Consumer Products Usually Have One Use – B2B Use Cases Depend on Role

Personalizing for consumers usually involves picking one main pain point and how your brand can fix it. Most consumer products only have one main use case.

As B2B, however, you must market a unique benefit to each role at a company from end-users up to C-suite.

Customer Experience Matters More for B2B Marketing and Personalization

A holistic customer experience might not matter for water bottles, but it sure does for enterprise software. 86% of buyers are even willing to pay more for the same product if one offers a better experience.

That’s why it’s so important to demonstrate your commitment to personalization and service immediately.

B2B Personalization Needs More High-Quality Content Than B2C

Do you think an average consumer reads 13 blogs before buying a new yoga mat? One or two maybe, but the average business buyer reads 13 during their journey.

Use content personalization to streamline your buyer’s vetting process and you’re sure to make an awesome first impression.

Consumer Personalization Must Prioritize Timing – B2B Personalization, Trust

Half of effective consumer marketing personalization involves just showing up at the right time. Hit them with an email on payday letting them know the couch they’ve been eyeing is 40% off and you’re golden.

Emotion matters more in B2B marketing than most people think but it’s rarely impulsive. B2B buyers plan for years and decades so establishing trust via personalization is paramount.

B2B Marketing Personalization Shouldn’t End After the Sale

B2B companies must invest more into post-sale customer experience than consumer brands due to the high cost of acquiring new clients.

Use personalization to understand how customers use your product, how they can squeeze more value, and what they can improve for better results.

Choose the Tools to Build B2B Personalization That Rivals B2C

Whether B2B vs. B2C marketing, it doesn’t matter: Personalization is only available to marketers today thanks to technology.

AI-driven content, data, and website tools let you collect accurate information, create a seamless website experience, and offer personalized content suggestions for every visitor.

Countless B2B companies trust Hushly’s innovative suite of personalization tools because our tech is designed to keep your data accurate in the process. Plus, you never have to sacrifice the user experience to collect lead data – not even a tiny bit!

Learn what Hushly does and how easy it is to personalize your B2B website in just a few hours.

How to Choose a B2B Marketing Agency that Understands Human Behavior

B2B marketing agency

You’ve no doubt noticed that “customer experience” or “customer journey” is all the rage in B2C marketing right now.

It’s all about creating a seamless and humanized experience for leads and current customers across multiple platforms – but should a B2B marketing agency take a similar strategy?

Well, your B2B buyers are also consumers for the 16 hours a day they’re not at work.

They want you to treat them like individual human beings – not merely extensions of the company they work for.

Here’s how to choose a marketing company that understands the importance of forming a human connection with prospects, leads, and current customers.

How to Choose a B2B Marketing Agency

There’s a new concept in marketing called B2E (everyone) or B2P (people).

It means that at the end of the day, you’re marketing to individual people – even if you’re targeting full teams or entire companies as part of an ABM strategy.

In our digital world that relies on data, it’s easy to neglect that there’s a single person behind every email address and number. They deserve to be treated that way and your B2B marketing agency should understand that.

They Understand That the Line Is Blurring Between B2B and B2C

83% of B2B buyers – compared to 84% of consumers – say that the key to winning their business is treating them like a human being.

Personalization is vital for meeting B2B expectations now. 85% of B2Bs say that they might look elsewhere if a business doesn’t take steps to personalize the very first interaction – that’s a lot of pressure!

Features like adaptive content hubs, content bingeing, and self-nurturing landing pages can help you meet buyer expectations and create the personalized experience they want – whether they realize it or not.

An adaptive content hub offers personalized content recommendations to every visitor based on their browsing behavior. Here’s what it looks like in action:

Hushly

They Take Steps to Clean Up Your Data

Discouraging research shows that only 1 out of 5 organizations are running effective personalization strategies.

Why? Well, one big problem is that they’re not working with accurate data.

Business data starts to rot a lot faster than consumer data. People change jobs, get promotions, switch roles at a company – all of this impacts your personalization strategy (especially if you’re running an account-based marketing strategy).

In fact, up to 62% of organizations are working with data that’s nearly half incorrect.

Your B2B marketing agency should strive to help you collect genuine leads with features like human lead verification and clean up the bad data you already have so you can create a successful B2B marketing strategy.

A B2B Marketing Agency Should Help You Create an ABM Strategy

Frankly, not every B2B marketing agency has the skills or resources to help you develop an effective account-based marketing strategy. However, they should at least mention the topic and point you in the right direction.

When it comes to personalization, it doesn’t get much better than ABM because you’re personalizing content with a specific company and job role in mind.

They Understand the Importance of Integrated Marketing and Social Selling

What do the most lucrative industries have in common? They use effective social selling strategies.

Social selling involves much more than posting on social media. Your marketing company should understand that social selling involves the following:

  • Participating in conversations
  • Connecting with your best customers
  • Building a strong brand authority on the right platforms

Social strategies are important because they show customers and leads that you care about and value their opinions and problems.

Your B2B Marketing Agency Should Have an Effective Exit Intent Strategy

What happens when a lead tabs away from your website? If you’re throwing a form at them, you’re just pushing them away even further, faster.

Instead, give them more of what they came to your website for: great content.

No one wants to fill out a form as they’re trying to walk out the door. Instead, use personalized popups like this:

Hushly

A B2B Marketing Agency Should Put Mobile Experience First

Research from Think with Google shows that roughly 70% of all B2B searches will happen on mobile devices in 2020. Furthermore, B2Bs will spend between two and three hours each day researching from their smartphones.

A mobile-friendly website is a necessity – not a luxury – and there’s nothing less mobile-friendly than forms and fully gated content.

When a lead arrives at your website from a Google search result or a link they found on social media and they’re hit with a form before they can access your content, they’re not going to deal with filling out the form on their phone. They’re just going to hit the back button and look for the information somewhere else.

Instead, let your content breathe. Let your leads browse your website at their own pace and provide their email address when they’re good and ready.

They Mention Plans to Create a Customer Management Strategy

65% of business buyers say they’d consider switching vendors if a company didn’t start personalizing communication. Your marketing agency should track intent data so you can continue nurturing current customers before they jump ship.

The buyer’s journey doesn’t end after you close the sale. Give them personalized content to build your relationship in the long-term and maintain your customer base.

Level-up Your B2B Marketing Strategy with Personalization

A B2B marketing agency should immediately take steps to personalize the buyer experience across your website and landing pages. Forms and fully gated content have no place on mobile screens – they just push your visitors away and tell them to find the information somewhere else.

Instead, we recommend lifting the blockade on your content so your leads can self-nurture and educate themselves. It works, too. In fact, you can skyrocket your lead conversions by 51% and content engagement by 305%!

Want to see what a B2B marketing strategy without forms can accomplish? Check out our personalized exit-intent popups.