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.
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.
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 [...]
As a business owner or marketer, you want to ensure that your marketing efforts yield a positive return on investment (ROI). In B2B marketing, it’s especially important to be strategic and focused in order to maximise the ROI from your marketing efforts. In this blog post, we’re looking at tips to help you get the most out of your marketing efforts. Identifying your goals The first step in maximising your ROI is to identify your goals. What are you looking to achieve through your marketing efforts? Are you looking to build brand awareness, educate your audience, or generate leads? It’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish, so that you can select the right marketing tactics and measure success accordingly. Once you’ve identified your goals, the next step is to ensure that your marketing campaign and measurement methods align with [...]
The rise of ChatGPT has led many to question the future of content marketing – and more specifically, how the content that fuels a content marketing strategy is created. With the ability to generate high-quality content quickly and at scale, is there even a place for human-generated content anymore? In this blog post, we’ll explore this question and provide insight into the future of content marketing in 2023. The advantages of AI-generated content It’s true that AI language models like ChatGPT can generate high-quality content that rivals or even surpasses the quality of content generated by SEO agencies or offshore writers. This is due to the advanced algorithms and vast amounts of data that these models are trained on. However, this doesn’t mean that content marketing as we know it is dead. In fact, relying solely on AI-generated content could actually be the kiss of [...]
In an increasingly competitive and unpredictable world, it’s no longer enough to rely on word-of-mouth, luck and randomness for your business growth. Instead, savvy B2B companies of all sizes are increasingly making use of tools like marketing automation to improve the reliability and predictability of their sales pipeline. Too often, less experienced companies will dabble with different elements of marketing, whether that be working with an agency that specialises in some areas, or focusing on internal pet projects. Sometimes there can be a fixation on just Google Ads, or SEO, or social media, or events – that is, a focus on just one or some parts of the funnel, rather than putting together the big picture. By mapping out their marketing and sales process, B2B companies can tweak and improve various stages, automating elements where possible and overall ensuring they can measure and improve the [...]
