Fact: People spend a lot of time and money on SEO and online marketing strategies yet waste most of the leads that these programmes generate. Most Googlers are at the early stages of the buying cycle which in B2B tech is typically eight months or more. They are either seeking justification for a project or exploring the options that might help solve the problem or pain that they are experiencing. Common sense and experience tells us that this is the perfect time to influence the way that they define their needs - and the solutions that will satisfy those needs: There is a great opportunity to help the buyer by providing great value-add information. It could be the start of a beautiful and profitable relationship.
Yet having spent the money to drive these early stage buyers to their sites, many companies fall at the first hurdle by failing to provide the kind of material that the visitor is looking for. It's like inviting everyone to a seminar and then not preparing a presentation. It's a waste. Investing in some well written, meaty web content and follow-up materials and making best use of that investment is one of the best ways to spend your marketing budget at a time when buyers are overwhelmed and frustrated by information that fails to inform and falls short of the mark.
Ask yourself this: When you are searching the web and trying to navigate around all the fluff to get to those nuggets that you are looking for, how much time - or inclination do you have to fill in a form before getting hold of the information that you require? Not a lot I’m sure. Many websites still lock their valuable information up behind registration forms that, as Nielsen Norman have conclusively shown, pretty much guarantee that you will miss out on 75-80% of your potential leads. More waste.
Next stop: the follow-up telemarketing call. Actually, the last thing that someone who is short of time needs is a sales call. Sirius find that 60% of B2B buyers consider cold calling of this kind inappropriate and actually reduces the likelyhood of buying anything from the company making the call.
This is really where most waste occurs. Almost all leads are wasted at this stage because they are fed to Sales at the wrong time in the sales cycle. Sirius found that an amazing 94% of leads are never utilised because they are nowhere near ready to be closed and should never have been put in the hands of sales in the first place.
Information which helps buyers to better understand the solutions that are available to them and which arms them with the knowledge needed to make informed buying decisions is the best way to accelerate the sales cycle and to deliver Sales with the quality sales opportunities that they need.