How B2B Businesses Can Achieve Their Revenue Goals
In our conversations with potential clients, most often B2B businesses with complex sales cycles, a consistent theme we hear from them is that they would like to be making ten million dollars per year in revenue, and eventually become a one hundred million dollar company. While this is an excellent goal for any business to have, another consistent theme we’ve seen over the years is that many businesses lack a system or philosophy for attaining those revenue targets.
For example, if we ask B2B leaders to start describing their ideal customer – the clients that are most profitable, easiest to satisfy, and easiest to close – they lack detailed answers. Additionally, website and social metrics are often a mystery to B2B businesses, who are typically focused on KPIs that are further down the funnel and closer to sales.
The secret to unlocking revenue in your business is to get methodical about how you make money. This means being very specific about what kind of consumer you are after, knowing the KPIs that drive leads and revenue, and using technology to extend the capabilities of tight-knit marketing and sales teams.
Who Needs You?
Although “finding your niche” is common business advice that most organizations already follow, at Marketing CoPilot we go one step further with our clients by encouraging them to be very specific about who they are trying to serve. For example, our process might help an IT services company realize their best clients are disaster and breach remediation cases, which would then allow us to develop campaigns and materials for that specific buyer journey. In your own business, you can think of “buying triggers” – the things that cause people to realize they have a problem. How can your business help prospects in that moment, and how can you nurture that relationship into a sale? This is how inbound marketing for B2B Businesses is done today.
What KPIs Really Matter?
Most B2B businesses are focused on sales performance, however the really interesting information is stored in your website’s analytics. There, you can see what pages your prospects are engaging with, how long they stay on each page, and, most importantly, how your website converts visitors into prospects through email lists, downloads of whitepapers or guides, chatbots, and other tools that facilitate that first interaction. One of the very first things we do with all of our clients is a Web Presence Health Check that determines how well their digital channels are performing, particularly against competitors in their sector.
Technology as a Team Member
With things like CRM, marketing automation, and even artificial intelligence becoming readily available to B2B businesses, there is no reason that businesses shouldn’t be implementing these technologies to create process efficiencies, offload monotonous white-collar tasks, and create more time for research, customer interaction, content generation, and strategy.
Platforms like HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Emfluence, and even the humble Mailchimp allow your teams to craft lead nurturing campaigns that operate automatically and adjust themselves to engagement signals, which adds value to your prospects over an extended period of time, builds trust, and improves your chances of making their shortlist.
Investments to Make This Quarter
If this is the year for B2B businesses to make investments in marketing and sales, there are a few things we can recommend doing.
First, you need to block off a couple of Fridays for stakeholders from marketing, sales, service, and leadership to discuss who your best customers are, what characteristics they have in common, and how more clients like them could be reached. We have a downloadable Customer Scorecard process that you can follow, and we have walked over a hundred companies through this process in our consulting work.
Second, we’d recommend reviewing your website’s analytics, as well as your social channels and email lists, to determine what the top of your marketing sales funnel looks like. We offer a Web Presence Health Check to diagnose issues on your website, compare your performance with competitors in your industry, and identify what you need to move forward.
Finally, it might be time to rethink your entire go-to-revenue strategy given the powerful technological solutions now available. With a properly-deployed CRM and marketing automation system, as well as artificial intelligence tools, your organization will have many more options available to reach consumers, nurture leads over time, and enter sales conversations with strong insights.
About Marketing CoPilot
Marketing CoPilot Inc. builds digital sales engines that help companies find customers and keep customers. Our proven methodology improves demand generation, resulting in qualified leads for your sales team. We have worked with over 200 B2B businesses in the technology and manufacturing sectors to turn their websites into their top-performing people.
