Engagement has become yet another overused B2B marketing term. And like all buzzwords, it’s at risk of becoming meaningless. Yet prospects need to be fully engaged to convert into buyers.
Do you know if your strategy consistently drives meaningful engagement? Consider these five questions:
1. Are prospects engaged, or just interacting?
Think about how you define engagement in your organisation. For many it goes something like this:
If someone downloads a whitepaper, that’s engagement. If someone signs up for a webinar, that’s engagement. If someone clicks a link, engagement. If someone likes a Tweet, engagement. And so on.
The dictionary definition of ‘engaged’ is to be ‘involved or deeply interested’. And that’s what B2B marketers want for their prospects. However, the above examples don’t necessarily evidence this. Many downloads or clicks are only indicative of a vague or passing interest. Ensuring people are deeply interested, and nurturing them accordingly, requires thinking about engagement in a different way.
2. Are they getting the information they need?
Aberdeen has conducted research to better understand how B2B buyers make purchasing decisions. One question focused on the last time they paid a premium for a service, and why.
Some of the responses were as you’d expect. Buyers focused on total cost of ownership and ROI, and favoured vendors who could support their business goals.
More surprising was the response from 44% who ‘believed the solution would generate competitive advantage’. This underlines a need for B2B marketers to clearly articulate how their product or service enables buyers to achieve competitive differentiation. Those that can achieve this are likely to engage more effectively, and steal a march on their own competition.
3. Are we turning them off?
All marketers dread the idea of communications actively alienating prospects. Our research confronted this head-on, asking buyers “What is your biggest turn off when companies are selling you products or services?”
Here’s what they said:
- They talk too much about themselves and don’t get to know our company (28%).
- They don’t provide me with objective information to help frame my decision (19%).
- They act more like vendors than partners (19%).
- They are too transactional and don’t seem interested in a relationship (18%).
It’s no surprise that talking too much about yourself and not taking time to understand the prospect’s business is a major turn-off. However, failing to provide the buyer with objective information to help them frame their decision is just as damaging as being too transactional or acting more like a vendor than a partner. This is significant considering another finding from our survey, that ‘lack of clarity around what we need’ is the leading reason that purchases don’t get approved.
4. Do we articulate why a purchase is necessary and urgent?
B2B decision-making is notoriously complex, involving multiple stakeholders with various priorities. It’s really easy for the buying journey to lose steam.
To overcome this, communications need to do more than help prospects frame a decision. They need to help them make a decision. Content achieves this when it makes the decision seem both necessary (‘you can only achieve your strategic goals in this way’) and urgent (‘to achieve differentiation, you need this now’).
5. Do we generate and act on ‘live’ engagement?
Unless marketing results in ‘live’ engagement – as in, the moment when a prospective buyer is willing to have a conversation – all other types of engagement are irrelevant. The ultimate goal of B2B marketing is to create opportunities for sales conversations with in-market prospects that result in a sale.
Unfortunately, it can often feel like this isn’t achieved quickly or consistently enough. If that sounds familiar, ask yourself whether you truly understand your buyers and give them what they need. Try experimenting with a range of tactics. And commit to ongoing and structured testing of the tactics you employ. This will help to refine your activity, while spinning off interesting data about your customers, your market, and your marketing efforts.
Challenge yourself, and your buyers
Remember, you are the expert in your discipline, and buyers look to you for guidance. Making decisions, especially if they involve serious investment, can be difficult. Buyers often need help to make these decisions. Sometimes they don’t know exactly what they need, and they’re looking to you to help define that.
To validate this point, the research asked B2B buyers: “Are you more likely to work with a vendor who challenges the way you currently do business – for example, by highlighting a pain point or organisational weakness you weren’t aware of?”
And 65% responded with a resounding ‘Yes’.
So, to avoid paying lip service to engagement, challenge and interrogate your strategy. And don’t be afraid to do the same to your buyers.
