Greg Ott
When was the last time you sold to just one person?
For the B2C marketer, the answer is everyday, but B2B marketers it is pretty much never. That is just one of the big differences between B2B marketing and B2C marketing, and these differences are amplified when it comes to online marketing. Although B2B buyer activity is clearly shifting online, B2B marketers are struggling to use B2C hand-me-down approaches and tools. There are three fundamental differences for B2B marketers online:
1. Low volume/high value sales instead of high volume/low value
2. Account based selling instead of targeting individuals
3. The attributes for segmentation and relevancy are business attributes, not behaviors
As B2B buyer activity has shifted online, it is good news because response and activity has become more measureable. But B2B marketers using B2C tools are not able to consistently tie spend to revenue, or figure out how to improve targeting and conversion. Modern B2B lead generation tools have merely been extensions of B2C tools, tracking individuals, and looking at factors of volume.
Effective B2B marketing must filter traffic and leads to focus more on quality than on quantity – passing leads on to sales that have high value potential can deliver a strong return on effort. Start with an analysis to determine who your best customers are and apply that lens to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff when looking at all web traffic.
Second, an individual’s activity needs to be rolled up in to a view of account activity. After all, the end goal is to ultimately sell products and services to that company – not necessarily the individual visitor. Multiple site visitors from one account are a significant indicator the company is in an active buying cycle. B2B marketers need to be more interested in how a company responds to campaigns and engages with web content, and follow up with the right next action or content for the entire account, not just the individual who visited. Lead scoring around these multiple visits from different people and qualifying accounts with your sales team will help them focus, shorten the sales cycle, and ultimately close deals.
Finally, now that B2B marketers know that all traffic is not created equal, and that tracking the account is most important, they need business attributes, such as company size, industry, and customer status, to be able to effectively segment accounts. B2C marketers use past behavior and demographics to signal intent. In B2B, interest is nurtured over time by optimizing engagement using the “firmographic” attributes to personalize messaging and create the more relevant and friction free online experience.
B2B marketers are finally leaving the kids table and setting up the B2B rules of online marketing. It starts with understanding that the one-size fits all approach to web marketing doesn’t meet B2B needs. The real return on effort comes from focusing on the companies that offer high potential rather than individuals en masse that have zero chance of becoming customers. Maximizing account engagement will shine light on different marketing strategies, and taking an account-based approach to driving, converting, and analyzing web and campaign metrics.
Responsible for marketing and product strategy and execution, Greg brings experience from both large corporations and startups in B2B and B2C. Before joining Demandbase, Greg was SVP of Marketing at Classmates.com. Greg has served as VP of Global Marketing at Ask.com, and in senior roles at Xoom.com, RealNames Inc., and Proctor & Gamble. Greg earned his B.S. in Engineering from Stanford University.
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