BtoB marketing, especially the creation of
business negotiations from the marketing department to the sales department, acquired promising prospects for the company (lead generation), nurture the prospects acquired ( lead nurture ), prospects with increased buying motivation And pass on to the sales department (lead
qualification).
Marketing automation tools automate these tasks, but even if you say "automation", it's not the case that the tools do all the work for you. In particular, lead generation, which is the first step in marketing activities, needs to be implemented on a continuous basis, separate from the tools.
In this article, we will introduce the know-how to efficiently implement lead generation, which may be called the entrance to BtoB's marketing
activities.
Basic prospects acquisition method
Lead generation (acquisition of prospective customers) is an activity to find and acquire prospective customers who can be targets for purchasing their products and services. Generally speaking, the flow of marketing automation starts from the point where the personal information of prospects acquired by this activity is put into the marketing automation tool.
So where and how do you get the key prospects?
3 customer attraction channels you want to curb
Channels for acquiring prospects can be roughly classified into the following three.
Offline marketing activities (events such as exhibitions and seminars)
Business card exchange in sales activities
Let's look at specific methods and know-how for each channel.
Representative measures for offline channels are exhibitions and seminars.
Exhibition exhibition
It is a method that has long been used in BtoB in a way that exhibits company products etc. at an exhibition and acquires business prospects etc. by visiting prospective customers and acquires business prospects information.
The exhibition is based on industry-specific themes, so you can interact with the many potential customers of your company. Therefore, based on the premise that totally unrelated people will not arrive, the basic goal is to get as many prospects as possible during the period. It is often used to make small novelties such as ballpoint pens and notepads, get business cards in exchange for novelties, and request acquisition or filling in surveys.
If you want to know more about attracting customers at the exhibition, please see this article.
Those who are troubled at the exhibition must see! 【Confidential】 A great open source of tips for gathering potential customers at an exhibition
It is a way to hold a seminar on a theme that is likely to be of interest to your prospective customers. The seminar participation fee is set free of charge or at a low price of several tens of thousands of yen, and in exchange for the seminar attendance, the participants will provide information such as company name, name, contact information, etc. You will receive a business card at the entrance of the seminar hall, and you will be asked to write a questionnaire on your way back, and you will be able to collect specific information.
If you design a seminar that matches the needs of your prospects, you may be able to get high-quality prospects who are willing to buy. In addition, by actually communicating at the seminar venues, you can expect the effect of enhancing the sense of closeness to your company.
Co-hosted seminar
This is a method of holding a co-sponsored seminar in collaboration with a company that handles products related to the company and related products. The method of collecting the participant's personal information in exchange for the participation fee of the seminar and the audition is the same as the case of the company seminar. Even if you use the same venue as usual, the goal for attracting customers can be halved if the two companies share it, and you can split the venue cost etc.
Also, the business advantage of hosting co-hosted seminars is that they can exchange prospective client information between their own and co-host companies. For example, if Company A, whose main product is Web site production, and Company B, which specializes in SEO measures, it is possible to gather layers interested in Web site creation and layers interested in SEO at the same time. Companies that are considering website creation may be interested in SEO, and there is a possibility that companies interested in SEO may consider website renewal. In this way, it is important to choose a company that can share the benefits of sending each other as a co-sponsor.
Please refer to this article for seminar planning.
[Series 1] Planning section of the seminar (Positioning of the seminar, goal setting, how to make the story)-All SATORI over 150 seminar results commentary!
[PR] Do you really understand the point of the MA tool introduction that you can really achieve?
Participant satisfaction 99%! Popular seminar
marketing automation "SATORI" introduction seminar that I would like to attend in order not to regret after introduction
2 Earn through online (Internet, Web) marketing activities
It is a way to transmit information using your own website or SNS, etc., and to obtain information on the prospective customers you have visited. It became active with the spread of the Internet, and now it is used as a very general and important prospect customer acquisition method.
Usually, users who only browse websites do not become prospects as they are. This is because it is necessary to have contact information (personal information) such as company name, name, e-mail address, and telephone number in order to be put on the flow of marketing automation as a prospective customer. Therefore, it is necessary to have a device for the visitors to provide personal information.
Here are some of the ways in which many companies have actually achieved results.
Provide white papers such as industry information and know-how
This is a way to create and provide white papers on themes that users who visit your company may be interested in. Make it available for free download from the website, and have the company name, contact person's name, contact e-mail address, etc. enter at the time of download.
Because white papers need to be of interest to prospective customers, you should spend some money on their creation. In addition to the fullness of the content, it is necessary to devise a device such as how to put a title that makes you think "I want to read!" If you have a lot of useful articles on your site, it is also effective to reorganize them by theme and provide them.
If it is difficult to create in-house, you may want to consider outsourcing to a company that specializes in white paper production.
Hold an online seminar
This is a method of holding an online seminar that attracts the interest and interest of prospective customers, and the same as in the case of the above-mentioned white paper, in that the applicant's personal information is provided at the time of viewing application.
Preparation costs are higher than white papers such as assignment of seminar instructors, preparation of video shooting equipment, and development of a platform for seminar distribution, but those who attend online seminars that take a long time to watch are more likely than white papers It is likely that you will be more interested in your company, and you will be able to attract prospective customers who are willing to buy. You can also record an offline seminar and use it as an
online seminar.
Provision of diagnostic content etc.
Providing content such as "automatic quote form" and "free of charge ● ● diagnosis" is a way to help acquire prospective customer information. Similar to other methods, you are asked to enter personal information in exchange for using content.
For companies that handle consulting products, it is effective to provide such content in a position to "show off" some of the main products. For example, if a company whose main product is Web marketing consulting, it is possible to acquire prospective customer information and convey some of the attractiveness of its own service by providing a free website diagnostic service.
Posting to external media (such as lead capture ads)
It is a method of inviting articles to the company site by posting articles in an external media that attracts customers, or posting advertisements with texts and banners in e-mail magazines with many readers. As with exhibitions, you can expect to have contact with many prospective customers by selecting media that is highly compatible with your company.
In addition, there is also a type of advertisement that acquires information on members of the media as lead information by using the media side mechanism. These ads can also help you reach new prospects that you can not meet on your own site.
3 Business card exchange in sales activities
Finally, one important channel that is often overlooked, though important, is business card exchange in sales activities. A sales representative contacts many prospective customers every day. The business cards exchanged at that time can also be good prospect information.
For example, those who made a new visit but missed due to timing may be very promising prospects for the future. Also, there may be cases where one product is lost but it becomes a prospective customer for another product.
It would be ideal if such a prospective customer information could be collected from sales representatives and centrally managed by the marketing department. However, in a system where individual evaluation is determined mainly by sales performance, there are cases where sales representatives do not want to provide "the business cards they have acquired" to the marketing department.
Therefore, it may be necessary to collect prospects from this channel, with the cooperation of executives and others, through company-wide efforts that assume seamless integration between sales and marketing departments.
▼ This article is also recommended Compare 10 selections of business card management application · software · tools | Price (free) · Features
We have introduced the lead generation channels and specific methods for each channel. So what can we do with marketing automation in this process?
What is the lead acquisition method by MA?
One of the strengths of the company is the acquisition of prospective customers via the Internet. With MA, in addition to acquiring real-named leads using web forms etc., it is possible to acquire anonymous leads using browser information. For example, in the case of SATORI, a private DMP (data management platform) is built in, so it is necessary to identify the visitor information from the advertisement or external site based on the cookie information of the browser and store it in the database as anonymous lead information. It is possible. As a result, it is possible to manage as a prospective customer a layer that can not acquire personal information such as e-mail address, and to develop marketing measures such as distribution of content according to the behavior history of the website and retargeting advertisement. . Also, if you can put a dedicated measurement tag on another company's site, you can also earn anonymous leads from there.
An anonymous lead that has been acquired is fostered using functions that allow the distribution of content according to the state of the lead, etc., and if guidance measures are taken to the inquiry form at an appropriate timing, a real name for which a specific approach is possible It is also possible to convert it into a lead.
Of course, personal information acquired in offline and sales activities can also be entered into the MA and linked with the browser to advance the behavior on the Web (reaction history on the website and reaction to measures). It has the advantage of making it possible to follow up measures, considering measures that will increase purchasing motivation, and making it easier to list the targets of the measures.
What are the key points in lead acquisition?
If you have read this, you may already be aware that all the methods have in common: "provide what the prospective customer wants, and in return receive personal information." It's a good idea for marketers to know how to do this in a smart and not too explicit manner.
Similarly, it is important to sift through prospects earned by what you offer. For example, even if a car selling company holds a web marketing seminar, it can not get promising prospects. I would like to keep in mind the "squeezing down" at the planning stage so that you won't get a lead that will never be a customer and disrupt the marketing activities that follow.
The following content is available for those who have trouble finding leads and how to develop them, so please refer to them as well.