B2B Marketers Need to Change Their Vision to Succeed During the Pandemic

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    B2B Marketers Need to Change Their Vision to Succeed During the Pandemic

    The coronavirus outbreak has significantly disrupted business and its marketing plans globally. The B2B marketers need to rapidly pivot their lead generation strategies to fuel their dry sales pipelines

    B2B marketing investments are mostly focused on conferences, trade fairs, events, and product launches. However, the global pandemic has radically transformed the face of the B2B marketing landscape. So, it is now a challenge for B2B marketers to change tactics to continue generating qualified leads.

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    Online Brand-to-Sales Programmes

    Firms need to focus on such creating customized online sales programs that will have an outreach according to company goals and objectives. They need to focus on identifying buyer personas and map messages to design targeted digital strategies. Developing assets that work in collaboration to develop a compelling narrative and engaging campaign is crucial.

    Considering all platforms available online to create the right marketing mix is essential to reach audiences at different stages of the funnel. LinkedIn, for instance, is a platform that B2B marketers can focus on in the current pandemic situation to generate highly qualified leads using its granular targeting options.

    Seismic Shift in Approach

    Now is the right time for B2B marketers to unleash the power of digital marketing as a catalyst to maintain engagement with the audiences and to generate qualified leads.

    Screen time is exploding as more professionals are working from home than ever have. Vodafone has reported about a 50% rise in internet usage in Europe. As per the Global Web Index, 37% of millennials and 23% of Gen X, confirmed using social media far more during the lockdown situation.

    This indicates that the target audiences are definitely more receptive to online activities right now, and in the coming months. So, the B2B marketers need to shift their approach and focus on online marketing campaigns to be deployed quickly, to deliver measurable results that will move the needle dramatically.

    Employee Advocacy 

    No in-person networking is possible anymore, but the employees can still be activated online to forge new business relationships. The key for B2B marketers is to ramp-up an employee strategy to facilitate the dissemination of company news and content marketing through the Sales and Business Development teams to be shared on social media and via emails.

    How B2B Enterprises Can Shorten Their Sales Cycle

    The company can focus on distributing content like must read-industry news, a daily digest of clients’ coverage on social media.  This will help the marketers to keep in touch with their connections and strengthen their personal branding.

    Re-engineer Marketing Budgets

    In a situation where everyone is expecting a global economic shutdown, it’s traditionally the marketing budget that’s the first one to be cut down. Companies think that in such a crisis situation, no one will be buying their solutions – this is how they end up jeopardizing their long-term market share. Therefore the B2B tech companies today need to continue to drive their business forward by expanding their measurable and relationship-based strategies such as – email marketing, search marketing, social media marketing, lead nurturing, and online communities.

    Personalization

    To achieve success and to cut through the noise, customization is the need of the hour. Only those businesses that truly know their customers and have insight into their prospects will succeed. Lead nurturing should be the focus to maximize the opportunities offered by CRMs such as Marketo, HubSpot, and Pardot.

    Though it is a hard time for all the marketers, they should not lose focus or hope. All they need to do is shift their focus to other marketing channels, keeping their goals intact, and their sales funnel full.