The greatest advantage of digital experience platforms like Kentico over basic CMSs is that they offer, well, much more than content management. For example, after logging into your dashboard, you can immediately go to the marketing module, create a newsletter from scratch and send it to your customer base. This is something that, in the case of, let's say, WordPress, would require an external tool. It's handy for online shops with a significant base of registered users, but can it also help B2B companies looking for clients among other companies? Of course! You can use the same mechanisms for lead generation. Let's see how.
The main differences between B2C and B2B sales are:
a) Long and complicated decision-making process. Whatever you sell, you will likely not deal exclusively with decision-makers like CEOs and COOs but also with middle management, specialists, or interns doing research. Many people can be involved, and you have to somehow appeal to all of them before you get to the "final boss" to seal the deal.
b) Much more time between first contact and purchase. Of course, it all depends on how complex and expensive your services or products are, but purchasing decisions in B2B are not emotional and can take weeks or months.
c) Greater need to build trust and personalize your message. Your clients are not spending their own money but the company's money. Their employees' or clients' well-being may depend on their decisions, so it's only natural for them to be cautious. You might have to prove yourself, not just advertise.
That means many touchpoints with your potential clients, and every touchpoint creates an opportunity to categorize potential clients as cold, warm, and hot leads. Then treat them accordingly and put your focus where the best chance of making a deal lies. Here is where Kentico's lead-scoring automation comes in handy.
AUTOMATED LEAD SCORING. HOW DOES THAT WORK?
There is a blurred line between marketing and sales in many B2B companies, especially small and medium-sized ones. A lead scoring automation solution by Kentico can help sort it out. First, establish rules regarding demographics, user behavior, and interactions with your site to evaluate the sales funnel. Then, automatically qualify your potential clients based on the established rules and adjust communication for them.
Everything comes down to setting up a logical system to help you understand your client's journey. You start with collecting user data, including at least the email. Then, with the Customer Profile ready, you can measure the level of engagement with your website and any other interactions you define. When registered users meet the rules you set up, they are assigned points. The overall user score can determine other automated actions related to the lead, like personalized content display or emails with special offers.
COMBINE GREAT CONTENT MARKETING WITH AUTOMATION TO GET RESULTS
Everything sounds great in theory, but how do you actually apply these mechanisms to your website? We know that even persuading the user to leave an email in the form can be challenging. Let's illustrate lead scoring with two examples of very different B2B companies.
Let's say you are a local coffee producer, and your primary customers are small cafes and coffee shops from certain areas. So you start a campaign offering to ship free coffee samples to such companies. Ads lead to a dedicated landing page containing a form with fields for the company's name, address, and user email. That way, you can create a customer profile. Then, every time a registered user comes back to your site, you can measure their activity, like the number of visited pages, videos watched, and so on. When the system recognizes the user as a hot lead based on the points awarded, it can automatically take a predefined action, for example, sending an invitation to a business meeting with coffee tasting.
And what when your company can't offer any free product samples because, for instance, it provides only digital services? For example, accounting software. Then, you can start with an old but unchanging principle - "content is king" and offer your potential client high-quality content. Maybe reports on changes in tax regulations? If the content is relevant to users and on-point, they will fill out the form to download it without hesitation. The lead scoring system will assign points. The ones who often visit your site for new articles, click on your social media posts, and download your reports can automatically get a personalized email inviting them to use your demo. Those who register to use it, providing more new data, automatically go to your sales funnel.
Our company is a Kentico Gold Partner, and our developers are highly qualified to deliver you a fully functional digital experience platform, including sophisticated lead generation automation. Schedule a quick call to discuss it with our Kentico specialists.
Everything sounds great in theory, but how do you actually apply these mechanisms to your website? We know that even persuading the user to leave an email in the form can be challenging. Let's illustrate lead scoring with two examples of very different B2B companies.