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B2B Thought Leadership: How To Use Data Effectively

B2B Thought Leadership: How To Use Data Effectively

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B2B Thought Leadership Research is a tried and tested go-to for marketers who want to increase their brand’s reputation and authority in the B2B technology sector. But, in all honesty, B2B Thought Leadership is very hard to get right. Too often, thought leadership initiatives either fail to capture interest, trust, or both.

While we agree that leveraging research to create powerful marketing assets is a smart move, we often see the marketing angle overpowering the quality of the research. Or, good research presented poorly.

With unfortunate frequency, data is leveraged sloppily or unethically to make an obviously biased claim or thinly-veiled sales pitch. This undermines credibility and the thought leadership initiative.

Even the more ethically-minded can struggle with effective thought leadership when they fail to synthesize a compelling storyline out of a pile of data.

From a firm that specializes in market research and messaging for B2B tech marketers, here are some guidelines to make sure your next B2B thought leadership initiative is successful.
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More Software Won’t Fix Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy | Cascade Insights

More Software Won’t Fix Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy

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If you’re a B2B marketer, you probably have one or both of the following problems with marketing and customer data:

  1. There’s too much.
  2. All that data still leaves you with open questions, or partial answers to key questions.

As a result, your data-driven marketing strategy fails to win you new buyers. Consequently, you might be seduced by the idea that more powerful software will make your marketing problems disappear. Or, that you are just one software integration away from truly understanding your customer. But more software won’t fix your problem.

In our research, we’ve seen purely software-centered B2B marketing strategies fail because B2B sales are too long and complex. A B2B sale might take months or years, and involve an average of 6.8 stakeholders. Thus, a single database can’t comprehensively represent what’s going on, and B2B marketers see large holes in their data they can’t always explain.

Conversely, in a B2C sale, the entire purchase might take a single buyer half an hour on Amazon. So, while B2C marketers can find everything they need to know about their buyers from analyzing social media, click streams, web analytics, and content marketing statistics, B2B marketers need a different approach.

Specifically, good B2B marketers rely on a blend of great software, data, and organic market insights – based on independent research.

So before you pull out your credit card, try this sanity check: when you look at your existing dataset, do you have a clear idea of how to fill in those dark spots in your data? If you answered “no,” put the credit card away. More software won’t solve your problem.

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B2B Sales Tactics Customer Buying Journey

Are Your B2B Sales Tactics Derailing the Customer Buying Journey?

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B2B sellers often think of their role in the customer buying journey as a numbers game. And organizations reinforce this notion. Promotions and pay bumps often hinge on how well the rep measures up to their KPIs. From the number of SQLs they convert to how much revenue they generate, these metrics are necessary for tracking and analyzing your sales team’s performance. However, these metrics don’t tell the full story but are chronically overemphasized.
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Lead Nurturing: How to Woo MQLs

B2B Lead Nurturing: How to Woo Your MQLs

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B2B leads don’t become customers overnight. B2B marketers need to master the art of lead nurturing to guide prospects in their buying journey. At this phase, your content has piqued their interest enough to fill out a contact form or download a whitepaper. Now your job is to keep their interest. You have to convince them that your solution is the best fit.

Knowing how and when to make contact with your marketing qualified lead (MQL) is the key to winning them over. But, there are a few things you need to consider before you make your move.
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B2B Buyer's Journey

B2B Buyer’s Journey: 7 Reasons Prospects “Swipe Left” Instead of Reaching Out

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First impressions matter, especially in the B2B buyer’s journey. Buyers identify the problem or need their company is experiencing and begin exploring their vendor options. They swipe left or right on potential matches based on nothing more than what they see on vendors’ websites.

The amount of time a prospect spends on all of that content you’ve produced is minuscule compared to the time you spent developing it. For example, Google Analytics data suggests that a reasonable target for average session duration on a B2B website is two minutes.

So much like a social media or dating profile, your site needs to be engaging right from the start.

Finally, buyers spend nearly half of their B2B buyer’s journey flying solo. A 2019 study from Gartner shows that buyers spend nearly half (45 percent) of their time in the journey doing independent research. Many potential leads are lost in this phase—without sales or marketing even realizing it. Why? Because something makes that prospect swipe left before they ever fill out a contact form, send an email or pick up the phone.

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B2B Buyer Personas

B2B Buyer Personas: Delete the Fluff

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The industry standard for B2B buyer personas is wanting. I frequently see buyer personas built by other vendors that read more like a dating profile than an exceptional piece of analysis and insight.

In these poorly amalgamated personas, significant time is spent on demographic details and personality traits of a buyer when other topics are far more critical.

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