The leading B2B companies in Australia are all focusing on their fat funnels – a unique approach that is essential for any company focused on selling complex, high value products with long sales cycles.
ChatGPT has made it possible to create readable, usually accurate content in seconds, potentially opening the floodgates for companies to create huge volumes of content. But if everyone is doing it, then it stops being a way to stand out. There’s already more content being created than humans will ever have the time to read, so pretty soon the SEO bots will stop rating this sort of content as well.
We know, we know - you're keen to get more leads into your sales funnel. And we're very keen to help you do that! It’s one of the most powerful and results-driven marketing options, but to make the most of it, we have a number of tips and tricks that will set you on the right track.
If you’ve run a lead generation campaign, or have plenty of contacts that might have gone cold, or are capturing details on your website and don’t know what to do with them, an ongoing lead nurturing program is a great way to reignite the fire, move people along your funnel, and identify the keenest prospects.
In B2B, often the answer is either ‘yes’, or ‘not yet’, so it’s vital to take a long term approach to nurturing these leads who are not ready yet. The idea of a fat funnel is a long-term funnel that captures interest from relevant people who aren’t yet in the market, and keeps in touch with them – potentially for years in some cases – through nurture content until they are ready to buy.
A lot of companies in B2B and niche industries like water, energy and infrastructure grow to a point where they start thinking more seriously about their marketing. They may have previously done a few trade shows, maybe some trade media, a bit of social media, and now want to bring it together and coordinate it properly. At this point, they might weigh up the benefits of hiring a marketing person or outsourcing this work to a marketing agency. Here we weigh up the pros and cons of each approach. Hiring Outsourcing Consistency Hiring someone in can be great, until they leave, and at the moment turnover in marketing roles is high. Often the best people seek out agencies or larger organisations where they can grow their skill set more, so you may be faced with having to regularly replace and retrain staff. Provided an agency [...]
Branding remains one of the most powerful and important marketing tools that all successful companies use. But in B2B marketing, sometimes the value of branding can be forgotten. Many campaigns are now based around what is sometimes called the ‘bottom of the funnel’, which includes things like generating leads. But even these campaigns can be far more effective when you already have a strong brand. Why does branding matter? Multiple studies show that the single biggest predictor of whether people will become a customer is whether they have heard of you before. Humans are naturally afraid of the unknown. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this is because, in many scenarios, ‘the unknown’ may pose some sort of threat. Consequently, we tend to favour people, places, and things that are familiar to us. Researchers and marketers refer to this phenomenon as the familiarity principle, also known as [...]
When you’re starting any marketing campaign, it’s really important to clearly define your goals first. This is the single best way to ensure you get the results you want. One of the most common mistakes we see is people getting it backwards. They start by choosing the platform or the content type, and come to us saying “We need to do Google Ads!” or “We need to improve our SEO!” without much thought behind the message or the “why”. When there’s a mis-match between your goals and the marketing platform or action you choose, you are less likely to get the results you want. What are your goals? Instead, start with your purpose. What results do you hope to get? Look ahead to the end of the campaign – what will make it worthwhile for you? Usually it’s going to be an increase in your [...]
Do we really need another article on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on marketing? There’s plenty of talk out there, a lot of it probably generated by ChatGPT, but I want to take a practical and specific look at how AI is impacting business-to-business marketing, particularly in the niche and trade industries that we operate in. ChatGPT has only been around for six months, and it may not have changed the world completely, but generative AI is certainly a game-changing tool. We’ve come across some companies who are actively using it in their day-to-day operations, others dipping their toes into the water, and plenty who still aren’t actually sure what it even is. I guess I should get some definitions clear first. Artificial intelligence (AI) itself is very broad, but at its simplest, it’s about getting machines to do anything which a human mind [...]
Everyone wants leads, ideally someone who already knows your product and is ready to buy today. Sometimes these leads come along, but in the business to business (B2B) space, generating leads can be a long and complicated process. With multiple decision makers involved and a long buying cycle, there are many traps for the unwary and tips for success in B2B lead generation. Will you marry me? “Wait what?” That’s a bit forward for someone you’ve just met! Rushing into a sales pitch with new leads, when not everyone is ready to buy, can feel a bit like this. It can come off as being a bit desperate – or even worse, it can scare off potential customers. Successful lead generation campaigns need either brand recognition or education around the product or service being offered first. If people either don’t know you or understand [...]
