Author: animeshjmathur

Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses – Part 2

B2B, lead generation, Marketing, niche

In the last post I spoke about how, by identifying a Single Target Market, Small B2B technology businesses can become better at generating leads. I even spoke about how marketing and sales have to incorporate psychology more than plain analysis to attract the desired audiences.

So in this part, we will look at how we can help get our message better addressed to our audience , so that they connect with us, respond to us etc.

There are typically two methods for getting leads – the “pull” method or the “push” method. By its very nature, the word push means that you are pushing something against a resistance. While in the pull method, the person is being “pulled’ or “attracted” with what you say or do and wants to interact with you and therefore responds to you. There is now right or wrong method. Both have to be used to get leads. However with the “pull” method or also called the marketing driven leads, the advantage is that the prospect has shown interest in what you offer and therefore has reached out to you.

For marketing however, the biggest challenge is to be able to convince someone, with the messaging, so that they can comprehend the message and then respond back with an inquiry.

But even before you can convince someone, you have to be able to reach that person. This is where by targeting a “Single Target Market” ,at a time (which we covered in our earlier posts, can be seen here), you reach a focused audience.

The analytical aspects of reaching out and convincing are related to the number of people being targeted, the number of mails that reached, the CTR, etc.

Now come to the psychological aspect of marketing and how you can utilise this aspect.

Humans have 5 senses – smell, see, feel, hear and taste. If you use one medium – say email with text, then the other side will only read it. So they will only use one of their senses – viz “see”. On a podcast, they can only “hear”. In a video or film , they can hear and see. By utilising the 2 senses together, your message can have a better impact.

As per Cisco, by the year 2022, more than 82% of all Internet traffic would account for with video. People recognise the power of audio+visual since ages. Films have impacted us so much – whether it was Ben-Hur or Star Wars . This does not mean that there won’t be people who would like to read or would like to listen. Different people have different preferences, but as a marketer, when you are trying to make an impact video/films have a larger impact because they utilise the power of the human brain.

Watch the video here

When you use videos to showcase how you have helped others, how you have solved problems for others, similar to themselves, then it creates more trust. Since the brain comprehends better with the use of two senses, if the customer is facing a problem, similar to what you have solved, then they are able to immediately apply it to their scenario and think – “we should check them out”. That gets them to reach out to you – a “pull” lead. The more “pain” in the problem that you show in the video and it is relatable to others in the same industry, the higher the chance that you will be able to get someone to say “tell me more”. This is where the psychology comes into play.

Even though the customer has replied back to you of his own volition, it doesn’t mean that he is ready to buy from you. In most B2B scenarios, there is an elongated buying cycle which starts with someone being told to first do the research on different options, then figure the budget etc. This cycle doesn’t apply in case there is a disaster and someone needs something “right now”. As an example, if you have had your roof destroyed in a cyclone or tornado, you need to figure out a solution now and will not go through your usual buying process. Similarly in organisations if say there is flooding in a data centre, then they need to figure out, how to keep the systems running, NOW.

Other than the disaster scenarios, B2B buying is process driven and you need to nurture the lead over the process. We will take this up in the coming posts.

Till then .

Carpe Diem!!!

Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses-1

B2B, Marketing, Positioning, segmentation, single target market

One of the big issues that small, B2B technology businesses face is that they try to be everything to everybody. They think that if we were to limit the market then, they may miss opportunities. A lot of technology businesses have mainly engineers driving various functions. They are very good at analysis, but marketing also has to do with a lot of psychology.

My team also has this challenge and I have to keep reigning-in their continuous “want” to try and spread the “net” as wide as possible.

One of the questions which I have to keep answering are typically like:

What if we don’t get a response to our email campaign. If we send it to many more people at least someone will respond

This is a very enticing statement – at least someone will respond. You however don’t know how long it will take before that “someone” will respond, because you don’t know the amount of time it will take to reach that “someone”. Every organisation has limited bandwidth. To be able to reach the whole “universe” of your “someone” it may take years. Everyone will be busy in the organisation, but you won’t get any results and after spending 6 months or 1 year, you will not know what you did right or wrong.

I have written multiple posts about the concept of a “Single Target Market” , at a time, which I took from Dean Jackson. All marketing books talk about segmenting and finding a niche. But when you limit your thinking to a single target market, then you focus your energy only on targeting that “one”market.

When you are segmenting, or finding a niche, depending on the interests of the people doing the segmentation, they may may make it very wide or very narrow. However the phrase “Single Target Market” makes it very clear that you are looking at “unique”, “Only One” , “Single” part of the whole market. Watch my video below to get a better understanding of this.

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/One way to figure whether the Single Target Market that you have thought of is the right one one, can be figured with the following process. If you are willing to be paid only after the client gets the result, then you have the confidence that you can successfully execute for that market. If you have doubts, then you need to recalibrate your hypothesis.

Once you have isolated your focused market, you can then go about checking the market potential, first on paper and then testing your hypothesis. If you run tests quickly and your hypothesis doesn’t work out, then you either adapt your offering/messaging/value proposition or you change the market. You learn your lessons fast and you adapt your offering faster.

But by doing it this way, you are quickly testing at a low budget if the market cares about your offering or not. You will live to fight another battle. If however you target a very large market space and can’t figure out where things are going wrong, then before you know, you will run out of money to sustain your operation.

There’s no doubt that it’s sexy to be able to tell people that we can do every thing. Today Amazon, ships almost everything. But Amazon started by just shipping books. As they became better at selling books, they launched other items. Each time they launch a new geography they follow a similar formula. But if you try to become Amazon on day one, you will be grounded very very fast.

Another question then that comes up is “what if” the customer we are targeting in the single target market, doesn’t need what we offer. Then you need to do more homework on your hypothesis before going out in the market. The more well defined your hypothesis, the better your tests will be.

So if you think an offering is good for the auto industry, then you need to think, how are the customers solving the problem right now and why should they listen to what you have to offer. I have a whole series of posts covering these points, which is basically my checklist for launching a new product or service into the market. I would suggest you visit those posts to get a more practical understanding of the process.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

AI impacting the B2B sales process

AI, B2B, education, Sales

Education is still the strongest weapon

When I started my career in sales , we didn’t have mobile phones, email, internet. The receptionist would physically connect cables to get your extension connected to the external phone. We would literally go from one security office to another physically ,to check if the person was available and then meet the folks. For most people this would sound like I belong to the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Earlier the sales person would carry the brochures with them in their briefcases. The information was controlled by the sales persons. The users would inform the challenge they were facing and then the sales person would take the brochure out from there briefcase and point out how their product/solution would solve the customers’s problem.

Since information was with the sales person, the prospects, would be willing to meet the sales person, so that they could get the information. Without the information, they would not be able to make comparisons between different products or solutions. The sales persons therefore got in much earlier in the sales cycle and the good ones were able to educate the customer, get the trust and influence the order.

Then came the internet. With the internet, all the information was available to the customers via the web. They could get whatever brochures, white papers etc. that they wanted, directly from the net, without having to wait or meet the sales person.

In this situation, the customers would gather all the knowledge that they needed to solve the problem before even interacting with the sales person. So getting an appointment became even more difficult. If the prospect had reached a stage where they now needed the information to compare or to get better pricing, only then they gave the appointment and that to, only to the vendors from whom they wanted additional information. So the companies who had not not put out enough information on the “net” , were not considered by the customers and therefore getting appointments became even more difficult for them.

So sales people had value , much later in the selling cycle, compared to earlier, but there still was value in how they would help optimise their solution or how the product would interact with other constituents of the existing setup in the customer environment.

Now with ChatGpt and other generative AI models coming in, even at the B2B level, my guess is that the sales person’ will be needed even later. The generative AI programs can write “code” and do comparisons between options and even suggest complete solutions.

Since customers will do all the activities on their own without the help of the vendors, they will do it as per their schedules. So the access to the customer will get more difficult for the sales persons. Since the customers may actually do the comparisons on their own, they may end up taking longer, since they may not understand all the nuances of a solution.

Having said this, the vendors can also use AI based tools to identify better on the prospects who could be looking for the solutions by using “intent” data. This was not available to sales people earlier. Once you have intent data, you can actually discreetly step-into the customers evaluation process and educate them with options about how other customers are solving the same problem.

Since you are now “educating” the customer again, chances are that they may get influenced by you. This again brings back the concept – that marketing is all about educating the customer. The way and timing of the education may change in this new world order, of AI, but education is still the best method to influence customers.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing lessons to be learnt from the success of Singapore

differentiation, Marketing

Create a “pull” with differentiation

As I mentioned in my last post , Singapore is such a small country in the middle of the Indian Ocean and yet it has gone on to become one of the richest nations with one of the highest per capita incomes. One of the things that I emphasised, in the last post, was how Singapore has leveraged its assets.

This time I will talk about how it has gone about creating differentiation for itself, one of the key attributes for success in marketing.

To ensure that tourists keep coming into the country, you have to keep coming up with things that are not available in the vicinity, so if tourists need to see that thing, they have to come to Singapore only.

Let me take my example only. As I had mentioned, in my last post, I had been going frequently to Singapore and yet this time when I went, I had found, so many things had changed. One of the things that I wanted to visit , was the Universal Studios at Sentosa. Reason. We don’t have a Universal Studios showcase and rides anywhere close to India. I would have to go to Los Angeles in the US, to show my family, the Universal Studios. For me, with Singapore, Universal Studios was in my neighbourhood. So it made sense for me to go to Singapore. 3 tourists got added. Similarly there is the F1 race track. The Lego museum etc.

There was a time that there was the Night Safari and the bird park, the aquarium etc. in Singapore. But a lot of countries, now have these attractions and if you have visited the aquarium in HongKong or Toronto, you may not find this very different. So to ensure that there is something different for the tourist to see, they have the Universal, the Marina Bay attractions etc.

Can you imagine creating a whole zone for fans of the movie Avatar. At the Marina Bay, they have created the zone. Even people who have not watched the movie Avatar and knows about their characters, tend to go there, just because everyone else has talked so much about it. No where else will you get this creation

There are a lot of small nations in the Indian Ocean, but none of them , has anything which can get me to visit them. Singapore has created the differentiation by bringing in so many tourist attractions at one place, that people find it convenient to go there. Indonesia/Bali have natural beauty, Thailand has beaches, but so many entertainment points at one location, that’s only in Singapore.

Now if you add, the English speaking population and the absolutely secure environment that the country provides to tourists, it makes for a default destination to visit.

In marketing, people will keep coming up with me-too items to reduce your advantage. If you have to sustain your competitive advantage, you need to keep coming up with ways to show ho you’re different from the competition. If you can differentiate clearly, in the eyes of the customer, you have a “winner” on your hands.

Till next time then.

Succeed by differentiating.

Carpe Diem!!!