A New Paradigm for B2B Marketing

Generating qualified leads is the Holy Grail for B2B marketers. Your marketing campaigns must do the following:

• Place your messages in front of highly targeted prospects.
• Grab those prospects’ attention and hold it.
• Communicate a significant amount of information in a short amount of time.
• Gently persuade prospects in a way that’s entertaining and memorable.
• Incent them to take an action that demonstrates a significant level of interest.

A study conducted by Rich Media calculates a 600% increase in viewer engagement and response rates using online video compared to static content such as text and graphics. It makes sense then to couple online video with marketing strategy and tactics like a story format. People are hard-wired to be fascinated by stories. They remember and retell stories.

I am fortunate to be acquainted with Joe Pulizzi, the Godfather of Content Marketing. I reached out to Joe to ask his advice. Here’s what he said when I explained my idea for an online B2B video marketing service: “I think it’s a viable idea… particularly the combination of building the videos on well-conceived marketing strategies, and telling stories via the videos. Those are differentiators that not only set you apart, but they’re what the market needs.”

Of course, this is all for naught if we don’t capture qualified leads from the process. Each video must include a call to action – a specific assignment given to the viewer that, if completed, converts them from a prospect to a qualified lead. That means there must be an offer of some type and a follow through. An appropriate offer (e.g. an ROI study) prompts the prospect to fill out a form to learn more about the product or service, thus self-identifying as a qualified lead.

Finally, the qualified leads must be taken care of. They may be ‘sales-ready’. In that case a salesperson is assigned to the opportunity. If the lead is qualified, but not ‘sales-ready’, they’re placed in a lead nurturing bucket. They will then be contacted periodically with relevant and useful information to keep them warm and engaged until they’re ready to buy.

Bob Leonard is the managing consultant at acSellerant. Over a 20 year period, prior to launching acSellerant, Bob held individual contributor and management positions in Corporate Marketing, Field Marketing, Sales and Sales Support at EMC, GTE, Interleaf (document management), and Digital Equipment Corp.

His consulting business acSellerant is a content and social media marketing agency that focuses on small to medium-sized (SMB) business to business (B2B) companies.