Producing strategic videos and digital content, and then integrating them into your B2B marketing and sales process will make massive impact in your business.
The scale of opportunities and the quality of leads you are attracting will improve significantly. And, your deals will move through the sales cycle much quicker.
But where the hell do you start with this stuff?
In this article, we’re breaking down The Visionary Roadmap to digitising your B2B sales process. This is the methodology we take long-term clients through on their journey towards B2B online mastery.
Or, if you prefer to watch it on video, get it straight from our Director, Sanjay, here:
1- STRATEGIC VIDEOS TO QUALIFY LEADS
Often we’ll start with a small project – producing 1 or 2 videos that explain your service, and why you’re a better choice than competitors.
This gives you a chance to really clarify your core message. Once the videos are launched, they improve the results of every marketing and sales initiative you already have in place.
Visitors are inspired to spend more time on your website. Every salesperson has a clear message to deliver to prospects. Your ads and outreach are super-powered with a highly strategic digital message.
And everyone who encounters you online receives a crystal clear understanding on why they should work with you.
Plus, it gives us a chance to work with you, build trust, and show some results in advance before we decide to work together long-term.
Typically, we’ll produce longer videos (90 seconds – 3 mins+) because they QUALIFY your leads as well. Only the viewers who truly relate to your message will consume the whole video and book a call with your sales team.
This means you’re speaking to leads who are already interested, and less likely to take so long to make a decision on your service. So your sales team spends significantly less energy during every new deal.
Check out this example we produced for Blue Crystal Solutions:
2 – CREATE A ‘CLIENT AVATAR’
Next, leveraging all the insights uncovered during your video projects in STEP 1, and then going MUCH deeper …
We’ll produce a “Client Avatar”.
The Client Avatar maps out the psychology of your PERFECT customers in specific detail. It defines their pain points, the benefits of working with you, why you are the best fit to help them, their demographics and much more …
This is a critical part of the project because every sales and marketing initiative we work on together in future will be based on this source of truth. We’ll deliver your Client Avatar as a “live document” – so it can be continually updated by us, as well as your sales and marketing leaders, as we learn more about your audience every year.
Over time, this has the uncanny effect of attracting the exact right qualified leads to your sales team. These are the ones that can make quick decisions, love your service, and recommend you to their network.
As an example, to see Visionary’s own Client Avatar, and learn more about this process, see our article here:
[ ARTICLE: How Defining A Client Avatar Will Revolutionise Your Business ]
3 – CLEAR MONTHLY REPORTING
Before any Digital Strategies are launched, you need to understand exactly where you’re at.
A simple dashboard that provides your most important marketing and sales metrics creates a powerful impact in your business.
It ensures you focus your energy & budget on optimising the right areas.
But typically, Marketing Agencies deliver pages of indecipherable data exports, right?! It’s awesome info for marketers … but can cause ‘extreme data overwhelm’ if you’re a Director trying to make business decisions.
So instead, at Visionary, we’ll deliver simple reports which focus on the main marketing and sales metrics only, followed by data-driven business recommendations.
(And of course, we still deliver those super-complex reams of data as an appendix).
Having the ability to make data-driven marketing and sales decisions creates IMMEDIATE results in your marketing and sales.
Here is an excerpt of one of our Management reports – notice that it’s not pages of automated data exports – just important business statistics combined with meaningful insights:
4 – STRATEGIC B2B WEBSITE
This one is self-explanatory. Anyone who considers buying from you – or associating with you in any way – will visit your website.
A strategically designed B2B website creates an immediate impression on every online visitor.
We’ll leverage the deep insights from your Client Avatar in STEP 2 so that the website explains what you do, while negating your competitors, in the ways your customers can relate to.
We’ll incorporate your videos from STEP 1 to ensure website visitors understand your service and are inspired to work through the website content. Typically, we’ll re-purpose the scene designs from your videos into your website as well, so that the viewer gets a consistent experience all the way through their buyer’s journey.
And we’ll design the website specifically for long-term B2B success (B2B websites should be VERY DIFFERENT to B2C websites).
That means incorporating strategic content, case studies, testimonials and authority elements to make a visitor FEEL that you can be trusted to produce results.
We’ll also ensure your website is built to integrate with the best B2B software tools and CRMs that you’ll implement as your online marketing evolves. And we’ll make sure the website satisfies all stakeholders in the buyer’s journeys of your customers.
Finally, we’ll integrate your website into your monthly reporting in STEP 3 so that we can continually track your visitors’ behaviours and optimise the site’s results month by month.
When you have a great B2B website, you can direct visitors to different content and videos at each step of their buyer’s journey to continually nurture them through the sales cycle.
Learn more about producing strategic B2B websites – along with client examples – in our article here:
[ ARTICLE: The Hidden Strategy Behind Visionary Video Websites ]
5 – STRATEGIC B2B SOCIAL CONTENT
In B2B, most prospects need months or years to make a final decision on whether they will go ahead and buy your service. There are multiple meetings, presales and layers of stakeholders involved in the sales process.
And usually, your prospects are mandated to evaluate at least 2 competing proposals at the same time.
So, during this sales cycle you want to make sure that everyone involved in the decision-making process from the prospect’s side is being continually educated and engaged by YOUR content on Social Media (and NOT your competitors’).
In this stage, we’ll leverage the insights from your Client Avatar in STEP 2 to ensure your social content is HIGHLY relevant for your audience.
Much more relevant than your competitors who are likely making the mistake of only posting about themselves – without thinking about their audience.
We’ll also launch your video content from STEP 1 and website pages from STEP 4 periodically too so that you are frequently creating “aha” moments in your audience’s minds.
They will be learning about how to choose the best provider (you!). And they’ll be experiencing your expertise BEFORE they make their buying decision.
It makes it much easier for your prospects to trust your brand and make a decision once they have consumed your content. And it’s very difficult for them to choose your competitors after they have learned so much from YOUR social media.
Watch the video below to learn about Visionary’s “4 Layer Theory” approach to B2B social media:
6 – REMARKETING USING YOUR VIDEOS
Have you ever been to a company’s website, and then you suddenly start seeing their advertising EVERYWHERE?
This is called “Remarketing”
It’s a very powerful form of advertising because anyone who has shown interest in your company starts seeing your videos and your ads in their newsfeeds consistently.
It keeps you at top of mind at all times during the sales cycle.
Better still, Remarketing is relatively inexpensive – often 50%+ cheaper than regular advertising – because you are showing ads to an audience who are already engaged with your brand.
At this stage, we leverage the videos created during STEP 1, laser target Ads to your audience using the insights from your Client Avatar (STEP 2), and continually optimise using your monthly management reporting (STEP 3).
See how we implemented video re-marketing in our case study with Australian tech company, Teleca Systems, here.
7 – AUTHORITY ARTICLES AND WHITE PAPERS
During a long B2B marketing and sales process you’ll need to educate your audience about your services, before they can make a final decision.
Longer form authority articles or white papers will help when they are sent or shown to your prospects at the right time in your sales cycle.
(BTW you’re reading an example of one these “authority articles” right now!)
Authority Articles should NOT be a long scholarly essay packed with technical language …
Instead, we’ll leverage the insights from your Client Avatar to strategically craft articles in simple language your audience can relate to. And by staying focussed on their pain points and requirements, the content will be highly relatable for THEM (and not necessarily for you).
We’ll incorporate the videos and scene designs from STEP 1 to break up the text. And we’ll launch the articles through your Social Media, B2B Website and Remarketing Ads in Steps 4, 5 and 6.
When done right, Authority Articles position you as the best fit to help your perfect customers …
So naturally, the sales cycle moves faster.
See some examples of Authority Articles in the work we’ve done for Visionary client, The Gild Group:
https://thegildgroup.com/resources/
8 – B2B SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
Social Media Advertising is when you pay LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube to put your content in front of your decision-makers as they are scrolling the newsfeed.
When done right, the Social Media AI is continuously learning about your customers, and can place strategic ads in front of the EXACT right audience at the EXACT right time.
So when you generate leads through Social Media Advertising, you’ll attract the right customers over time. Because they have requested a phone call with your team, they’ll be receptive to speaking to you and more likely to close faster.
In this stage, we create HIGHLY relatable ads that give your audience unique, valuable insights. Social Media technology allows us to laser target to the right decision-makers based on their job titles, revenue levels, industry, search activity, content views and so much more.
We’ll leverage all the previous steps to make sure the Ads are providing significant value to the right decision-makers and nurturing them, step by step, through a buyer’s journey.
NOTE: This is not an easy setup! It takes 3 – 6+ months to build and optimise a Social Media Advertising strategy. But once you have it set up and working nicely, you’ll have a system that allows you to scale your business at a regular pace.
See an example from our work with Visionary client, Comtrac, here.
9 – MARKETING AUTOMATION POWERED BY A CRM
One of the most powerful tools in your online marketing and sales stack will be your CRM.
This allows you to track your entire online marketing and sales process, and then fine-tune each component in detail.
The CRM optimises every part of the business as it records and manages interactions with leads, prospects and customers. It ensures your organisation, and your marketing, works together a team to deliver each individual contact the most value possible at every stage of their buyer’s journey.
There are plenty of excellent CRM tools – Visionary clients use HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and other more niche tools.
But our overwhelming preference is HubSpot because it is evolving the fastest, integrates easily with all the digital tools you’ll implement and scales with your company’s success.
Because your entire online marketing and sales infrastructure will be built around your CRM, it’s very important to choose the right one, with a long-term perspective.
Every time the CRM software adds a new feature, that’s effectively an enhancement to your business …
WRAPPING IT UP …
Can you see how all the components build on each other and snowball your online B2B success?
Don’t worry … you don’t need to have every one of these strategies implemented in your business right away!
Once you have your Videos, Client Avatar and Monthly Management Reporting (STEPS 1, 2, 3), you can understand exactly where the bottlenecks are in your sales and marketing.
From there, you might only need to implement a few of these strategies to see significant results.
Want to see some examples of how this looks in the real world?
Check out some of our client examples here, or reach out for detailed case studies relevant to your industry:
