Two decades of B2B lead Gen learnings — Nelson Bruton IV // Interchanges

Quotes

• “We’ve been here for 19 years but we didn’t start out full-on B2B. We started out as just a web design company. Long story short, we realize it takes more than just a website to help a business achieve results, so we started the stack with SEO, PPC, email marketing, live chat, content strategy and then social media came in. We rode that wave over and we realized 11 years ago that B2B space is where we want to play because ROI is typically much easier to show.” - Nelson“Three or four years ago, we realized that we had this partner program of everything I just mentioned. We build a website, we have a retainer, we have PPC marketing and consulting alongside of that and we’re getting a nice retainer for those services, a partner program as we call it. About four years into that everybody started doing something similar and the market got competitive in that space then social media came along that changed the whole dynamic of the partnership program so we had to evolve.” - Nelson“B2B is all about the relationship so there was a big reluctance to move to this thing called online. So B2B has been very, very slow to adapt. Even today, there are companies that are still behind the curve of online marketing but we won them with relentlessness and showing case studies from other customers.” - Nelson“The fundamental of all marketing is people buy from people. The fundamentals haven’t changed for B2B organizations. What has continued to evolve is how the people connect and how prospects find you and research you. Showing up in the first page of Google has been and still is very, very important. Organically and through paid channels.” - Nelson“Social media seems like a different beast that is about discovery, it’s when you’re interjecting your business into somebody’s experience while they are browsing the internet. Most of the time people are just burning the hours on social media.” - Nelson“LinkedIn is the primary area we focus for our customers. We have a unique solution where we reach out via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. So here we can identify very specific target audiences for niche companies and there we can do an outreach program to help set about two to ten appointments each week.” - Nelson“LinkedIn is the social media play for B2B because that’s where a professional has a profile and they are typically not just perusing LinkedIn, it’s more of a messaging platform to communicate with the professionals.” - Nelson“If a company can put the time and effort and subject matter experts to work then content creation and building out that content engine with the ability to have that back and forth communication is absolutely key. It’s what we call social media management.” - Nelson“I am still in cultivation mode. I want to hit 10,000 LinkedIn followers as a goal. Once I hit 10,000 it is estimated that about 65% of those 10,000 are going to be the ideal people based on some marketing that we have been doing.” - Nelson“So the goal for you using LinkedIn is not only a messaging platform for direct-message spam but it’s also producing content and building an audience so you can start to engage with them, influence them and do some education.” - Ben “The next evolution of B2B marketing is refinement because there’s not really new platforms or new channels. I think there will come a point where people are going to be pragmatic, realize they are doing different things and that they need to evaluate what they are spending both from a budgetary standpoint and from a time standpoint. You need to ask what’s producing the most impactful results to sales teams and distributors.” - Nelson“It’s interesting that you call it refinement and I think a lot of this is that ABM has become a popular set of technology that people are using, although it’s a little bit of a buzzword. But really what ABM is understanding who your target is and creating more specific messaging and marketing platforms for the most valuable leads, prospects, potential customers.” - Ben “I think there’s a big challenge that exists in the B2B marketplace right now, interestingly enough to the fault of the software companies. All these varying level of expense, marketing automation and email marketing software that are out there and getting sold to these businesses but they are amazing if the business is prepared, has the content and the painting gun. Otherwise they’re preparing for the software for six months before they can even launch their first campaign and they realize how actually hard it is to develop content and think through all the pages that need to be developed.” - Nelson“The software isn’t the solution. I’ve talked to so many businesses over the years that bought into these softwares from the less expensive to the most expensive ones and they get frustrated because they had them for six months and they either cancel or talk bad about it because it didn’t have the strategy to go with it.” - Nelson“Part of the refinement are the hard lessons of planning before embarking on any marketing strategy. What should be common sense analysis questions are going to be more apparent for that refinement.” - Nelson“Fundamentals of B2B is you have to make sure that when people are looking for you online you have to show up at the first page of Google. That’s absolutely fundamental. Organically and through paid search. I think that you have to do the LinkedIn outreach to your target customer. Start sharing value there.” - Nelson“It’s also important to track everything, you have to inspect what you expect. I think having a good CRM in place to be able to make sure you know where your opportunities are coming from, how long your sales cycle average is, and which channels are producing sales opportunities that actually turn into revenue.” - Nelson