The B2B Marketer's Guide to Winning Customers and Providing Success

The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Winning Customers and Proving Success Four tactics to attract prospects, build lasting relationships, and deliver metrics that matter.

What’s Inside Trailblazers B2B marketing has been turned on its head o ver the past few years. We asked two Trailblazer experts to share their unique The field has gotten a lot more competitive, customers are more POV throughout this guide to help you improve your demanding, and the pressure is on marketers to prove their time and B2B marketing. budgets are moving the needle. The good news is marketers have new tech tools at their disposal, namely improved artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. While AI is continually evolving, it’s making a big impact in the way marketers can personalize messaging at scale and measure performance to optimize campaigns and gain buy-in from leadership. These new tools are making them more productive and cost-efficient. Anne Wave In this guide, we’ll cover four tactics to take Anne specializes in scaling programs and positioning your B2B marketing strategy to the next level: marketers to grow. She has more than eight years of experience in email and lifecycle marketing, with a 1. Think Like Your Buyer 03 strong focus on digital analytics. 2. Let AI Be Your Marketing Assistant 09 3. Score Buyer Behavior 12 4. Measure Success with Reports, Analytics, and Data 15 Nout Boctor-Smith Nout is a proud email geek with more than 13 years of experience in marketing, mostly B2B, with a focus on email and CRM marketing. Her niche is tech companies that build developer tools.

1. Think Like Your Buyer No two customers’ paths are exactly Know your buyer. alike, but if you study many customer journeys, you can figure out their Who buys your products? That’s the first thing to figure common milestones. out. What’s their title? To whom do they report? Different touchpoints on the customer How are they measured? journey provide data that informs As marketers learn about their buyers, they summarize marketers of a customer’s interest in a this knowledge in what’s known as a buyer persona. product or service. Simplifying all of this data into one view — a buyer’s journey A strong persona is specific and based on actual people map — can serve as your guide. who’ve purchased with real (anonymized) quotes. It will This chapter will show you how to build a help you understand how to communicate with the buyer. persona, read a buyer’s journey, and use a marketing funnel to better think like your buyer. Building a buyer persona takes psychology, interviews, research, and time. You have to know what’s important to buyers, and really know them as people. Anne Wave

1. TThehe 6 6 b buuyyeerr a arrcchehettyyppeses.. Most B2B buyers don't act alone. They sit on a buying committee that will collectively make purchase decisions for their company. If you know your buyer’s role on that committee, you can figure out their needs and how much power or interest they may have. User Technical evaluator The person who operates The person who installs, secures, whatever is purchased or maintains the product Champion Executive sponsor The person who most wants The most senior member of the purchase to happen the committee Economic buyer Influencer The person who controls the budget Someone without a direct say but whose opinion matters

1. Understand buyer purchase behavior. Once you know who your buyer is, you need to understand their purchase behavior. What steps do they take? In what order? Where in that process does the buyer interact with your company? With this information compiled, you can produce a buyer’s journey. Buyer Journey Data to Watch The first place people The touchpoints after The touchpoints tend to contact you the first interaction at each stage The average number of The average number What content they touches per account per of touches per account consumed at each closed-won deal per closed-lost deal touchpoint

1. Develop a Buyer Journey Map. Next, examine successful journeys where someone ended up purchasing. You can work backward to figure out what paths, content, touchpoints, and personas correlated with you winning the deal. Then create your own marketing buyer’s journey map of just the touchpoints where you can influence them. That vendor sends e a helpful guide v Decides to upgrade i t i sales tech s One vendor o Receives Purchase P responds venture funding immediately Asks friend for via chat e recommendations c Buying committee en Other vendors reply meets to decide i l er a p r x Far too many tools e eut Schedules calls with Demo s ’ N to evaluate major CRM vendors r e y u B One vendor e Google search not keeps calling v All vendors send i t very helpful a way too much g e information N Unaware Problem-aware Solution-aware Product-aware Evaluating Click here to plan your team’s journey

1. Create a marketing funnel to measure and monitor buyer progress. Common marketing funnel stages Marketing funnels are a graphical representation of where your prospects are in the buyer journey. If a prospect is at New the beginning, they’re at the top of the funnel. A prospect you need to know more about Bottom of the funnel prospects are highly engaged and (website, trade show booth visitors, close to making a purchase. or newsletter subscribers). Nurturing A prospect that’s not interested now, A funnel helps you: but may be in the future. Keep in touch. Working Know what content or calls to action In active conversation. Profile the prospect 1 to present people with based on where through forms, downloads, and behavior data. they are in their evaluation. Marketing qualified lead (MQL) Categorize your content by the Qualified 2 funnel stage where it’s most useful. Prospect wants to purchase. Pass along to sales. Sales working lead Measure your effectiveness via Sales accepted lead (SAL) Sale qualified lead (SQL) 3 conversions, leakage, funnel progression, and funnel velocity. Customer Prospect who has purchased. 4 Figure out how to spend your time. Upsell/Cross-sell Existing customer who’s a fit for an additional product.

1. Don’t send everything to everyone — get smart and segment. You can divide your buyers into groups based on whether they’ll be receptive to a specific message. This process of grouping buyers is called segmentation. Segmentation makes it easier to target your customers and ensure you are sending them relevant messaging based on where they are in the buyer journey. Here are a few ways you can segment your audience: Status Persona Funnel stage Company type Company size (buyer, customer, former customer) Examples of leads removed from the funnel: Recycles: Unqualified: • A lead that was disqualified • Not interested or not a good fit but may be interested again • Fake email address • Reenters the funnel at the • Works for a competitor nurturing stage • Title is “student” or “intern” • Their email hard bounced

2. Let AI Be Your Marketing Assistant Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most powerful tools for B2B marketers, yet it is one of the most underused. AI can save marketers time, help surface insights without manual analysis, personalize interactions with customers at scale, and even assist in copy editing. In other words, think of AI as your team’s marketing assistant. There are two types of AI that B2B marketers are likely to encounter: Predictive AI Generative AI Allows marketers to create original content, Allows marketers to surface insights about segments, and campaigns, saving them time their customers without manual analysis — and helping them scale their work. It works and act on them quickly. It works by analyzing by leveraging large language models (LLM) your data, recognizing patterns, and then allowing marketers to describe what they are applying those patterns to future customers looking for in a prompt using natural language. and interactions. The LLM then pulls keywords to generate new and original content.

2. How AI can save marketers time: Predictive AI Generative AI 1 Lead scoring. Remove the work of maintaining a 1 Copy and design. Use AI to create first drafts of email scoring and grading rubric by identifying leads that and landing page copy and design, which you can edit are most likely to convert to closed-won, based on and modify as needed. how closely they look like your current customers. 2 Personalization at scale. Build personalized 2 Account scoring. Take the guesswork out of surfacing customer journeys and offer recommendations based top accounts when planning ABM campaigns. on real-time customer profiles. 3 Personalized send times. Identify when 3 Campaign briefs. Save time and take the manual work a customer is most likely to interact with your emails out of filling out campaign briefs. based on past behavior, and then personalize email send times. 4 Segment generation. Build out customer segments that best fit your campaign and outreach. 4 Suppression lists. Identify customers who might be oversaturated with email messaging and then dial down the number of messages they receive.

2. Considerations for using AI. AI is a great time-saving tool, but there are a number of factors marketers should consider before diving in. Relevance and Trust Data Security Look for generative AI models that Ensure AI has access to your sales data Make sure inputted sensitive take a human-in-the-loop approach, for lead and account scoring. This will information is not publicly accessible including prompts for marketers to ensure AI considers the types of and is not pulling from sources you provide feedback as the models are accounts and prospects that have don’t have permission to use. being trained. historically become closed-won.

3. Score Buyer Behavior Nurturing leads is the act of growing relationships with potential buyers by Custom Redirect Click 3 points Page View 1 point sending them resources that are truly Email Open 0 points Site Search Query 3 points valuable to them. But to do this, you need to understand how engaged your Form Error 3 points Social Message Link Clock 0 points buyer is. And to do that, you need to use scoring. Form Handler Error -5 points Third Party Click 3 points Scoring measures how interested a Form Handler Submission -5 points Tracker Link Click 50 points prospect is in your products. To score Form Submission 0 points your buyer, your marketing automation 50 points Video Conversion system can apply each buyer a score Landing Page Error -5 points Video Play 25 points depending on how they interact with you (usually 1—100+). Landing Page Success 50 points Video Watched 75%+ 3 points As prospects interact with you, they Olark Chat 10 points Visitor Session 50 points accumulate points. Scores can help you assess the value of your content Opportunity Created 50 points Webinar Attended 50 points and whether leads are interested in Opportunity Lost -100 points Webinar Invited 10 points talking to sales. It’s important to note that you can create additional scoring Opportunity Won 0 points Webinar Registered 25 points categories for multiple products.

3. In addition to scores, you can create grades. Grades measure the value of a lead or account based on whether they’re a good fit for your If a prospect falls within product. They also measure how interested you the desired criteria: should be in a prospect. Every lead or account is assigned a grade (usually, Company size + A, B, C, D). The lead gains parts of a letter grade 2/3 of a letter for positive factors (revenue, headcount, region) Industry and loses parts of a letter grade for negative factors. + 2/3 of a letter Pro tip Grades help you prioritize which companies are a fit for your products and help the sales team prioritize Location + AI tools can help create a rubric in-bound leads. 2/3 of a letter for scoring and grading leads. Job title If trained on a vast data set, AI Together, a score and a grade can reveal the + complete picture of lead quality. Creating a rubric one full letter can apply wise insight that might for your scores and grades is more art than science. Department otherwise take years to accumulate. It takes experimentation and guesswork. + Predictive AI also removes the 2/3 of a letter need to revisit scoring and grading Yours will never be perfect, but that doesn’t mean models, since the AI system creates they can’t be useful. Whatever assumptions you make the model. about why you chose the grades and scores you did, write them down and revisit them quarterly.

3. Set up automated nurture flows to improve your buyer experience. Once you’ve created scores and funnel thresholds, you can start to use rules within your marketing automation platform to communicate with people based on where they are in the journey. For example, if someone hits a score of 60, add them to the “accelerator” email stream. Some marketing automation systems provide a visual map where marketers can drag and drop emails onto a canvas and set entry and exit criteria for each stage. Activate nurture flows within your marketing automation system to: Identify top leads for the sales team. 1 Identify top accounts for ABM efforts. 2 Decide what emails to send and when 3 to nurture prospects. Surface marketing insights to inspire 4 tests and campaigns. Lead nurturing is about surfacing buying-ready accounts or those giving signals. It’s giving them things to do and scoring appropriately, and building upon that until they’re fully aware of your products and would recommend them. Nout Boctor-Smith

4. Measure Success with Reports, Analytics, and Data Demand generation marketing is beneficial because it is measurable, and if you understand For each number you’re tracking, you your data analysis, nobody — not even the CFO — can always ask the following questions should be able to stump you with a question. to get a sense of its importance. This will help you with resource allocation and also justify marketing’s seat at the table with sales • “Would my boss care about this number?” and customer service. • “Would my colleagues in sales or customer B2B marketers work in partnership with sales and service care about this number?” customer service to bring in pipeline and revenue, and they need to show how their role is working with the broader teams. Data analysis isn’t just for internal marketing. Closely monitoring the data tells you what to adjust and what to stop. What separates good marketers from great ones is knowing what to measure . Anne Wave

4. Focus on the metrics that matter. It is important to think about the metrics that matter, not just to marketing, but to sales, service, and your chief revenue officer. Pipeline: The movement of potential Return on Investment (ROI): The Annual Contract Value (ACV): 1buyers through different sales or 2value of an investment versus its cost. 3How much an ongoing customer marketing stages. contract is worth over a year. It's also imperative for marketers to understand how they are influencing ROI. One way to look at this is through attribution reporting, which includes first touch, last touch, and multi-touch. Each view offers a different perspective on how you’re contributing to sales. This could include: First touch gives all credit to the Last touch gives all the credit to the 3Multi-touch spreads the credit evenly 1first touchpoint. 2last touchpoint before purchase. across all touches.

4. Find leading indicators that suggest prospects are moving toward the end goal. If the end goal is to drive sales-accepted leads and it takes most prospects 60 days to get there, what do marketers do in the meantime? This is where leading indicators come into play. Most goals will probably be lagging indicators closely tied to revenue, but those numbers change infrequently and only after an opportunity is won or lost. It’s like trying to drive a car without seeing the road. If we look at leading indicators — short-term, fast-moving metrics like clicks, form fills, and lead scores — you can see where leads are headed and adjust. All good marketing measurement is built upon a combination of two indicators: leading Leading indicators Lagging indicators and lagging. One suggests, the other confirms. • Views • Revenue • Clicks • Upsells • Form fills • Cross-sells • Campaign reach • Renewals • Send volume • Acts of advocacy • Conversions • Marketing-attributed • Leads revenue • Pipeline • Customer churn rate

4. Measure funnel progress. The entire point of building a marketing funnel is to track progression from one stage to the next. If marketers can track progression, they know which buyers are moving toward a purchase and which are dropping out. This allows them to adjust their marketing and make a difference before they decide. The equation for this is simple — at any given point in the day (for example, the last day of the month): ÷ = % # of prospects # of prospects in the Conversion in a funnel stage prior funnel stage If a marketing team uses many different marketing tools, odds are they all provide their own analytics and have different definitions for what counts as a conversion. If you’re a high-maturity organization with well-integrated tools, this will be much easier. The more integrated, the better, because the data is cleaner and it’s easier to set up dashboards that accurately reflect your most important metrics.

4. Unearth insights with AI. Reporting can tell you what has happened in the past, but AI can predict what might happen in the future. AI allows marketers to review past successful deals that help identify actions you can take to drive the greatest amount of revenue. Artificial intelligence can: Identify leading indicators associated with 1 positive outcomes. Summarize and inform you on next best actions. 2 Notify you of anomalies and big changes you 3 should know about. Identify trends and allow you to anticipate changes. 4 Measure velocity and understand when things are 5 speeding up or slowing down.

5. What Does Your Future Hold? B2B marketing is a great place to test skills and develop new ones. It takes a daring and inventive person to nurture leads, integrate campaigns, and persuade others with data stories. Our world and the technologies we use are constantly changing. Staying one step ahead will ensure longer-term success both for yourself and your business. As you move forward, keep these six things front of mind: 1 2 3 Make friends. Do more with less. Measure your impact. It’s your job to make friends on other teams Learn to be audacious but scrappy so you Know how to tell if your work produces and get everyone aligned. can thrive in any economy. results. Especially in terms of revenue. 4 5 6 Know your scope. Market internally. Know your purpose. Your job is to help buyers buy. To effectively support yourself and others, Overcome distraction by asking, “What Don’t beat yourself up about the rest. you have to show your impact. do I want prospects to do right now?”

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