"THE GROWTH BLOG" - A RESOURCE FOR B2B LEADERS, MARKETERS, SALES & SERVICE PROFESSIONALS

This data from Marketing sherpa confirms what most B2B Marketers know to be an essential truth; generating leads as well as converting qualified leads into paying customers are the top priorities and challenges for B2B marketers. These days these twin challenges are rapidly shifting online as buyers make a bee-line for their search engine of choice to start their buying journey. This is why your website is integral to your B2B marketing strategy; it's how your buyers find and familiarise themselves with you.

The end goal for social media in a B2B context is lead generation and revenue. However, all too often great social content can be lost in the online abyss of 'marketing la-la land', resulting in content that's not distributed through the right channels, to the right people, in a circumstance-specific manner.

How do you market to your B2B buyers in a way that won't scare them off, but instead nudge them down the funnel towards sales? For each campaign we are faced with this question. And each time, coming up with a good strategy takes much brainstorming and forethought. But that's the nature of this business: B2B marketing is challenging.

Let's face it - there are some things that B2B marketers just shouldn't automate.

We already blogged about the four major buyer roles in a complex sale, so today's post is about gauging your buyer's interest level. Digital body language (aka what you do online) can tell you a lot about how interested your prospect is. Of course, this is expected to change over time, depending on what goes on internally where said prospect works.

Just when us B2B marketers were getting comfortable with social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin, out comes a new contender for our time - Pinterest. Now if Pinterest were insignificant, and it was about as popular as Google's Buzz (sorry Google!), we'd probably leave it be until we were sure it was worth investing time in. But alas, as of February 2012, Pinterest reported 10.4 million users, with each visitor averaging 97.8 minutes on the site, 83% of which are 18-34 year old females.