B2B Inbound Marketing: How to win active Prospects as Clients

chain relations || Torsten Herrmann || 24.07.2009 || page 1 www.chainrelations.de

B2B Inbound Marketing

How to win active Prospects as Clients

B2B-Inbound-Marketing


The Active Prospect I

• According to Marketing Sherpa’s “B2B Lead Generation Handbook” 80

% of all clients found their vendors by themselves.

• Therefore, 20 % of all clients are the result of direct marketing, tele-

marketing and sales calls.

• Which strategies do companies use to better reach this 80 %?

• Current discussion is mostly about activities instead of strategies,

mostly online-marketing on a trial-and-error-basis. A structured,

strategic basis for Whitepapers, SEM or Weblogs is needed.



The Active Prospect II

• New situation: Active prospects search for vendors and contact vendors

when they are ready.

• This is possible because of the volume of information available from

vendors, market analysts, media and other sources, mostly via internet.

• Additionally, as corporate decision-making has gotten more and more

complex, a fast ROI is mandatory and the decision-making climbs up the

corporate ladder, the preparation must be right to the point.

• Therefore, a new strategic approach is necessary:




B2B Inbound Marketing

• Companies exist to integrate and transfer their micro-segmented

competencies into complex value propositions relevant to the needs

of their clients.

• B2B Inbound Marketing is the ability of a company to adjust their

value propositions to the clients and value needs of individual clients.

• B2B Inbound Marketing follows the processes of a client (decisions,

production, SCM etc.).

• Basics of Inbound marketing are competencies, relationships and

information/content.



B2B Inbound Marketing in Lead Generation

• B2B inbound marketing in lead generation follows the decision

processes of a client.

• Targets:

– Inform the prospect, so he starts the contact with the vendor

– Demonstrate competency and ability/strengths of a solution

– Reduce the client’s risk evaluation

– Pre-qualify the prospect for the sales contact

• Highly individualized communications is needed in inbound-marketing.

– Don Peppers/Martha Rogers: “As the interactive age arrives, every enterprise

has to learn to treat different customers differently”.



Decision process I

• Separates itself into preparing for the decision and then making it.

• Inbound marketing focuses on the preparation:

– Recognize and describe problems

– Time-table for an investment

– Develop requirements for products and suppliers

– Choose suitable solutions and vendors

– Research dependencies with current infrastructure

– Research costs (investment, service, usage, maintenance etc.)

– Define necessary process changes, market or other (dis)advantages

– Evaluate make or buy



Decision process II

• The preparation (as well as the decision making) is rarely a well

structured process.

• The person responsible for the preparation can’t rely on routines. His

job is very complex and he welcomes any relief.

• The person preparing to make a decision needs to feel he can trust

the vendor and their information.



The 5 “I” of B2B Communication to build Trust

• Developed by Kleinenkamp/Ploetner (1996)

– Intensity: Trust can only be built long-term and in small steps.

Individuality: As every prospect prefers different content and presentation

forms, trust must be built on an individual basis.

– Irradiation effects: As competence and reliability are hard to perceive in

advance, prospects look for alternate information, e.g. size of vendor.

– Intelligence: To communicate intelligently means to deliver the right, risk-

reducing information to the decision maker. References are helpful.

– Integration: Integration means that all communication activities and the

prospect have to be involved.



Content Marketing I

• Eingine of inbound marketing is content that:

– Focus on decision makers & show solutions from different perspectives (Individuality)

– Meet decision maker‘s interests, i.e. are relevant (Individuality, Intelligence)

– Help decision making/preparation because of personal/prof. reasons (Intelligence)

– Are somewhat exclusive (Individuality)

– Are consistent and complete (Integration)

– Allow a long-term dialogue and a step-by-step increase in expertise (Intensity)

– Make the competence of a vendor and the capability of a solution tangible (Irradiation

effects, Intelligence)

– Are easily available, e.g. registration for download (Integration)



Content Marketing II

• The vendor needs a concrete content marketing strategy. He must define

– Who (decision maker, preparer, influencer) should receive

– Which content (messages) in which detail

– Because of which influencing factors

– Via which communication channels and activities

• The vendor needs to see himself as a publisher of high-quality content

competing with other information publishers.

• Content is released on corporate blogs, Twitter, micro sites or external web

sites (e. g. whitepaper portals).

• Holding back information like before is counter productive.



Content Marketing III

• Marketing has to know the person it wants to connnect with.

• Buyer persona (David Meerman Scott): Instead of large target groups

marketing should reach personalized decision makers.

• Make buyer persona more lively with names, positions, biographies

• A buyer persona needs to identity his needs, responsibilities and risk

evaluation in marketing communications.

• All members of a buyer center must be considered.

• Make it easy for everyone to get hold of your content.



Content Marketing IV

• Risk evaluation of a buyer persona depends on:

– Investment type

• Product, system or plant

• Recurring purchase, purchase with changes or first-time purchases

– Technology diffusion along the technology adoption lifecycle (Everett M.

Rogers/ Geoffrey A. Moore)

• Innovators

• Early adopters

• Early majority

• Late majority

• Laggards



Micro-positioning I

• A vendor must communicate their value propositions (capabilities) to each

buyer persona = Persona propositions.

• This general approach is reflected in the content and the level of detail.

• All influence factors/parties have to be considered.

• The difference to classical positioning is in the micro-orientation towards the

buyer persona.

• There are three way to get an insight into what a buyer persona wants:

– Internal or external expertise

– Analysis of requirement specifications

– Qualitative, field research



Micro-positioning II

• Basic messages (persona propositions) are developed based on the

expertise or the results of the analysis or field research:

– per buyer persona

– per investment type

– per risk evaluation



Three Steps of B2B Inbound Marketing

• The 3-step-process to support prospects in their decision making

process and to generate them as leads is:

– Find

– Providing information and getting contacted by prospects

– Nurture marketing and lead qualification

• Generally it is best, if marketing and sales define together, what a

sales ready lead is. One possible way is, that marketing is responsible

for these first three steps. If the (pre-qualified) prospect wants

concrete information on solution, sales steps in.



Find I

• Prospects do not only limit their supplier search to the internet. To

reduce risks they will (Enquiro Research):

– Look for existing/certified suppliers

– Ask colleagues inside and outside their own company

– Ask existing suppliers with other solutions

– Comb through general information of suppliers

• But in most cases they will research potential suppliers online first.

• Additionally, most information research and dialogue will happen

online – especially early in the sales cycle.



Find II

• No separation between online & offline. Users are savvy to navigate

in-between.

• Central B2B inbound marketing activities are:– Search engine optimization (SEO)– Search engine marketing (SEM)– Blogs & Twitter– Social media– Public relations– Exhibitions– Public speaking– Industry associations



Providing information and getting contacted by prospects

• As soon as an evaluator starts to consider a concrete, complex solution, he

needs a connection to the vendor.

• To inform himself and to initiate he uses channels the supplier offers:– Websites– Blogs, Podcasts & Twitter– RSS-Feeds– Whitepapers– Webinars– Product tests– Bulletin boards– E-Books – Call-back buttons– Online Chats



Nurture Marketing and Lead Qualification I

• Vendors have to nurture the prospects until they are ready to decide.

This might take months. Marketing establishes a continuous

information exchange and a dialogue with the prospect.

• The care consists mainly of materials that the prospects chooses by

himself (newsletter, webinars, whitepapers).

• In parallel the vendor tries to speed up the decision process. The

buyer persona might need additional information to push the decision

process internally or to see the relevance of a decision.



Nurture Marketing and Lead Qualification II

• Sales takes over as soon as the prospects is sales ready. Marketing

and sales should decide on when it‘s the case.

• As the prospect builds up expertise during the process, sales efforts

will decrease.

• During the process and the dialogue the vendor receives information

for the lead qualification. Web analytics can be very helpful.



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B2B Inbound Marketing: How to win active Prospects as Clients

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