B2B Marketing 101 - Calls to Action
All business to business (B2B) marketers are familiar with Calls to Action (CTAs) used to motivate prospects to act. In traditional media (pre-internet) CTAs were important because there was no way to interact with potential customers; the advertising had to speak to the customer and get them to do something, preferably NOW (”Call our 800 number in the next 5 minutes and you’ll receive…”). I would consider this is a single layer Call to Action because the media speaks directly to the end-user to engage with the 800 number…a live sales person.
The internet actually introduces a 2 layer call to action structure. The first layer is to get the prospect to visit the company’s website in the first place and that is accomplished using traditional media as well as various online (SEM and PPC) marketing methods. There are many people more qualified in that area than me so I will focus this article on the prospects that are visiting the website; the second layer CTAs. The goal of website CTAs are to uncover and capture qualified prospects.
B2B marketers find themselves with a whole new set of CTA enticements to engage the prospect including offers for things like Whitepapers, Webinars, Free Trials, etc. The problem with most CTAs, however, is that they are weak and non-discriminate; prospects rarely have a problem finding the resources elsewhere. Efforts to up the ante by providing higher‐quality content rarely lead to finding and capturing highly‐qualified prospects which is what sales really needs.
How can marketing fix this? The first step is to determine what constitutes a good CTA for a specific organization. For the purposes of this paper we will focus on a product vendor that sells enterprise class products, not commodities. Unlike a commodity (B2C) website that uses a shopping cart as its ultimate call to action, a B2B website is generally trying to find and capture the contact information of high‐quality prospects. Sales cycles are long so we are simply trying to identify the best prospects. So, what will motivate the qualified prospects to show themselves? A well thought out CTA for a B2B technology vendor should, at a minimum, satisfy the following:
1. It must have high‐value to the prospect
2. It should only be available on the vendor’s website (scarcity)
3. It should appeal more to a highly‐qualified prospect than a non‐qualified prospect
4. It should appeal to prospects in the “research” phase of a project when the vendor’s value proposition has the most impact
5. It must be easy for the prospect to act on
Typical CTAs satisfy portions of this list. Item #1 (high‐value) is hard to determine because most prospects realize that most CTAs, especially whitepapers and webinars, are simply warmed‐over sales pitches. Scarcity (#2) is an issue with the ubiquitous nature of the internet; most white papers can be found with a simple search.
Items 3, 4 and 5 represent the true sweet spot for a successful CTA because the combination will ensure high quality prospects that can be influenced early in the sales cycle.
To analyze and find strong CTAs it helps to understand what prospects are looking for during the sales cycle. The typical B2B complex sales cycle is broken down into four (4) major stages: Awareness, Research, Negotiation and Purchase. So what are prospects looking for in these various stages? According to a study done by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa, we have the following Sales Stages.
Awareness Phase
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Is there a solution to our issue/problem?
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Who are the solution players?
Research Phase
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Product Information
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Comparisons to other products
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Decision Making Criteria
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Budget Fit
Negotiation Phase
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Defined Pricing
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Delivery
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Support
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Defined Feature Set
Purchase Phase
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Corporate “fit”,
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Customer Service,
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Implementation,
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Final Procurement Info
(Source: MarketingSherpa and Enquiro “What are B2B Purchasers Looking For?” September 2007)
In the complex B2B sale, the key to winning business is being engaged in the early phases to ensure we are chosen at the end of the process. To have a successful outcome relies heavily on influencing the customer’s expectations and requirements, especially during the Research phase. B2B marketers understand this fully and that is why the majority of CTAs focus on this area.
Closer examination of the Research Phase shows 4 distinct things prospects are looking for: 1) Product information, 2) Comparisons, 3) Evaluation Criteria and 4) Budget fit. Of the four, marketing easily handles 1 through 3 and tends to spend 100% of its time on “convincing” the prospect that their product is best.
What’s missing?
B2B marketers never address #4, Budget Fit. This table clearly shows that budget fit is required during the research phase for a prospect to successfully understand the offering so why don’t B2B marketers provide it? The short answer is they do not have a mechanism to do so efficiently.
A Stronger Call to Action - Budgetary Pricing Since budgetary pricing is the one, vital piece of information that is generally not available on a vendor’s website and is needed during the research phase, why don’t we use it as a CTA? Most organizations immediately dismiss this idea because they assume it would cause any number of the following problems:
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Our competitors could see our pricing, we would have no way to control it
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Different sales channels and customers get different pricing
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Pricing on the web would allow prospects to ignore the sales team even more
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Product configurations may be complex and require technical help
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Sales and Marketing do not have the IT resources to manage the process
So how do we solve the above issues and use budgetary pricing as the ultimate call‐to‐action? The answer lies in using an approval based, self‐service budgetary quote process. Here are the same obstacles with the proposed solution:
1. Our competitors could see our pricing
Solution: All quote requests require approval before a quote is delivered
2. Different channels and customers get different pricing
Solution: Custom quotes can be delivered with different pricing structures (assigned at approval time)
3. Pricing on the web would allow prospects to ignore the sales team even more
Solution: The approval process ties in Sales at the critical research point of a project, a win-win
4. Product configurations may be complex and require technical help
Solution: Kits and “Advice” methods can lead customers to correct configurations; the sales team should be able to correct on the fly
5. Sales and Marketing do not have the IT resources to manage the process
Solution: Outsource the service
Summary
B2B marketers must select and apply strong CTAs to attract and capture highly‐qualified B2B prospects in today’s competitive business environment. They must truly understand what qualified prospects need and when they need it. In the lengthy B2B sales cycle, prospects need budgetary pricing early as part of the Research phase. There are several obstacles that make it difficult to provide budgetary pricing including 1) identity of the requestor, 2) different pricing levels for different customers and sales channels, 3) complex product configurations, 4) engaging the sales team, and 5) it may require unavailable IT resources to create and manage.
Approval based, self-service pricing methods delivered as a web service are designed to overcome these obstacles and more. Using a Self‐Service Budgetary Quote portal, prospects can now “self-qualify” by selecting and receiving a custom budgetary quote. This process also ties in the sales team and puts the vendor back in charge of the sales process. This approach meets all of the criteria for a strong Call to Action and could possibly be the “Ultimate Call to Action”.
What do you think?
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