Modern BtoB Demand Gen Tactics, New Management Frameworks Highlighted In New Book

DemandGen Report caught up with Needles to find out more about balancing the needs of the buyer and the objectives of the seller, as well as balancing one-to-one interaction with scale operations.

DGR:  In the beginning of “Balancing the Demand Equation,” you emphasize that content creation is more important than ever for BtoB marketers, due to the increased power of buyers. Can you expand on some of the attributes of today's empowered buyer?

Adam B. Needles:  Succeeding with Buyer 2.0 and with modern demand generation means that we as BtoB marketers must become experts in understanding and supporting the content consumption journey of our targeted BtoB buyers. This also means that BtoB marketing must lead our companies’ efforts to educate and qualify our targeted buyer — given that as much as 60-90% of this new (content-based) buyer dialogue is occurring before Buyer 2.0 ever comes in contact with a salesperson.

I highlight in the book that there are three major behaviors emerging — ones that we must respond to as BtoB buyers. These may seem to be intuitive, but the reality is that they too often are ignored in our demand generation efforts:

• BtoB buyers are increasingly turning to online sources, on their own, earlier in their process, to research purchases, and they are engaging vendor resources — particularly calling a live sales rep — later and later in their buying process;

• BtoB buyers are increasingly leveraging social media, such as Twitter, blogs, etc., for peer communication in the information collection phase of the buying process; and

• BtoB buyers are pursuing their online content consumption more “massively multi-channel” than ever before.

This flips BtoB demand generation. It is no longer merely about getting to the phone call with a salesperson. Rather, it must now be an integrated activity where much of the buyer education and lead qualification process should occur upstream, online, via content and managed by marketing. This should happen before a lead ever gets handed to a sales team member. I know many “old school” sales professionals would argue the opposite, but to do so would be to go against the wishes of the modern BtoB buyer, or Buyer 2.0.  Moreover, premature engagement by sales only impacts their win rate.

DGR: What are some of the more prominent content creation best practices?  

Needles: First, let's be clear that content marketing strategy must be at the core of any automated, perpetual demand generation program. So it's the starting place.

Second, there are four elements that are critical to succeeding with content marketing in modern BtoB demand generation:

• Defining buyer personas and their influence in the buying process;
• Mapping core buying-process steps and associated content consumption;
• Building a content marketing plan; and
• Managing content marketing performance.

DGR:  You discuss two key issues within the current BtoB space: 1) BtoB marketers aren't connecting to buyers or supporting the buying process in a value-added fashion, and 2) They're not building a foundation for a continuous and long-term relationship with buyers. Why are these factors hindering profit so dramatically? More importantly, how can marketers move past these obstacles and create a meaningful relationship and dialogue with prospects?

Needles:  You highlight what are the two, key imperatives in the book.

First, as I note in the book, "We’re not really connecting with buyers, or supporting their buying process, in a value-added fashion."  This is a major issue. In a bygone, “Mad Men” era, vendors controlled the communication channels, and chose a paternalistic “cattle-herding” approach because it was efficient for sellers. That's what interruptive, batch-and-blast, mass marketing is, and it meant not really engaging or supporting buyers or their buyer education process in a particularly helpful or one-to-one manner.

In a web 2.0 environment, we don't dictate the rules of buyer education. Moreover, given the advent of CRM and marketing automation, we now have the tools to actually scale one-to-one interactions with buyers. So we need a new tack if we're going to succeed. Rather than trying to “sell” to BtoB buyers, today we need to partner with them — supporting their buyer education process with value-added content insights. Of course we still want them to buy our products/services, but the focus here is on giving the buyer what (s)he needs to independently come to the conclusion that our product/service is the right fit.

Second, as I also note in the book, "We're not really building a foundation for a continuous and long-term relationship with buyers."  This is a related consequence of our “Mad Men” era practices. Our batching and blasting, and then our handing over leads to sales meant that we too often took a very transactional approach to demand generation as BtoB marketers, and that also meant that we often handed off leads that were not “qualified.” 

Engaged participation in the buyer's education process pre-sales, combined with a customer lifetime value approach to demand generation, means a deeper and longer-term relationship with a BtoB buyer. This means that for your investment you wind up getting a many-times-greater return through the long tail of robust revenues. Moreover, when you bring the closed-loop environment of marketing automation and CRM into the fold, you can then optimize so that you know the specific content offers that your targeted buyers value most, and so you can maximize your revenue outcome from demand generation activities. Finally, by delivering higher-quality leads to sale, you increase win rate and average deal size, which means you get higher return on sales assets. All of this contributes both to higher revenues and higher profits.

This is not merely hypothesis; this is fact. The team at SiriusDecisions has proven this with data they released at their most recent annual Summit in Scottsdale. They proved that best-in-class, closed-loop nurturing consistently results in off-the-charts revenue and profit growth; whereas, so-called “laggards” often showed flat or negative growth.

Adam B. Needles is a passionate BtoB marketing change agent — helping companies build successful, modern, buyer-centric demand generation programs to drive revenue growth and to build sustainable brands. He has led marketing strategy and demand generation programs for dozens of companies since the late 1990s.  Adam is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for a ‘2.0’ digital demand generation agency, Left Brain DGA, headquartered in Silicon Valley.