Author: David Dinh

For over 10 years David has helped drive hundreds of thousands of customers to businesses and understands what it takes to manage the chaos and headache of customers across different departments, systems and platforms. From roles in product development, product management, working in enterprises and advising for businesses going to sale and exit, David’s DNA is understanding the customer. David currently serves as Chief Operating Officer and Growth at Woveon, ensuring teams can scale and respond back to all their customers.

Customer Experience Management and their Importance to Businesses

Posted on May 21, 2019June 23, 2021 by David Dinh

Customer experience metrics provide a means of gaining access to tangible evidence of your business’s reception which gives you an idea of what steps you could take to improve the overall customer experience. Your best tool to enhance customer experience management and improve customer support is to gain a deeper understanding of what your customer wants from your company.

Detailed insights provided by metrics give you the most unbiased representation of your company’s success. There is a lot of debate on which customer metrics are the best means of gauging your success.

Below are metrics that will definitely help your business.

1. First call resolution (FCR)

Properly addressing the customer’s needs the very first time and eliminating the need for subsequent phone calls (or emails) is known as FCR. The importance of having a good FCR value is pretty obvious; your customer is satisfied the first time around, which serves to improve their trust in your support team. They’re guaranteed to come back for more business.

2. First response time (FRT)

Customers expect that your support staff are constantly on the edge of their seats waiting for the phone to ring up so they can immediately respond to their grievances in a timely manner. Something along the lines of “90% response rate within the first 5 minutes” is sure to improve your customer’s overall experience. Customer experience management is all about staying on top of what your customers expect of you.

When it comes to emails, response times for typical companies can vary from between 24 to 48 hours. These response timings are getting ramped up however, and top customer support teams are boasting response times of less than 60 minutes nowadays!

3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One of the most preferred customer loyalty metrics, developed by Fred Reichheld, NPS is used by organizations of all sizes and functions. NPS, because of its simplicity, is the perfect starting point for companies that would like to eventually collect more advanced customer metrics.

You can start by asking questions which are useful to both your company and the customer such as “On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that you’ll recommend our product to your friend?” Follow it up by using a 0-10 point scale with proper labels at both ends, such as “most likely” at number 10 and “least likely” at number 0.

4. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) can be as easy as showing a scale spanning from 0 to 5 asking a generic question such as “How satisfied were you with our products and services?” It is easy to understand and use by your customers. However it does tend to give a few misleading results because the scores can be somewhat inconsistent.

5. Customer Effort Score (CRS)

A powerful customer experience management metric that measures the ease of accessibility of your services to the customer, CRS requires you to prepare short survey asking questions such as “How easily did the company handle your issue?” and then follow it up by placing a short scale, ranging from “Very easily” to “Very difficult”.

6. Contact resolution

Contact resolution is a complex metric which is influenced by dozens of factors such as the level of your support team’s training, complexity of the call and type of transaction. The general rule of thumb is that the longer your customer holds their phone, or the more they send grievous emails, the poorer is your contact resolution.

7. Net Retention Index (NRI)

NRI measures the number of repurchases or returning customers who conducted more business with your company. If you have a subscription based model, you can calculate your NRI by dividing the number of customers that extend their subscriptions by the total number of customers you have that subscribed to the service.

8. Upselling ratio

This is the ratio of customers who purchased more than one type of product from your company against customers who only purchased a single product. It may sound the same as the NRI, but it is slightly different, in that, it also takes into account the types of products your customers purchased with your company.

9. Omni-channel experience

It measures the success of your multichannel sales approach, whether you’re conducting business online, offline, on computer, mobile phone, on different channels – it really doesn’t matter. Omni-channel integration is not only difficult to handle, but also weighs heavily on the resources of your company. If it fails to provide a seamless experience to your customers, you’re obviously wasting money and ignoring potentially loyal customers. Customer experience management is all about picking your battles, and knowing where you can win.

10. Customer emotion experience

Using emotions to connect with your customers can definitely retain them for the long haul. There really isn’t one single way of measuring psychological values because they’re essentially intangible. You could assign a certain value to an emotion and ask the customer to choose from a provided scale. For instance, ask them the question “Do you love our product?” and then attach a scale providing both extremes to choose from, such as “I love it!” and “I hate it!”

After all love and hate are the most effective means of understanding emotions aren’t they?

What Makes a Great Customer Support Team?

Posted on May 17, 2019April 9, 2019 by David Dinh

Sometimes perfection fails to exist at an individual level; but when individuals who are not perfect, come to work together as a team, they can create magic. For a team to succeed it does not require flawless employees with everything being perfect. It just requires a bond between workers which allows them to work together to provide fruitful results.

Customer support is an important aspect of business which helps in turning every customer into an advocate for the brand. Even for brands that do not have high sums of money up their sleeves, customer support is a method they can employ to out-support the competition they cannot out-spend.

A great customer support team is an amalgamation of numerous shared characteristics and vision.

Here are some qualities that make a great Customer Support Team:

Operate as a Company

For a brilliant customer support team, their work is just not limited to a department. They work for the company and as the company. We have seen and heard of countless instances where customer support teams have saved the day for an organization at the hour of need. A customer support team vying to achieve greatness should think of themselves as representatives of the company to the outside world.

It is them, who is in contact with customers 24/7. Top level management is not present at all times, and they have to make instant and result-oriented decisions in the heat of a moment. The liberty to make these decisions should be provided, which would help the team keep the interests of the customer above anything else.

Everyone Should be Kept Updated

Another important trait of a successful customer service team is to keep everyone within the team in the loop. Unity comes from clarity. There is bound to be friction and differences within team members if information is provided to only a few and hidden from the rest. Everything should be laid down in front of all team members, and all the team members should be directed towards achieving the goals in unison.

Study Data Carefully

Customer trends are every-changing, as there is no single trend which can be called everlasting. To remain on track with all recent and updated trends, it is best to study trends and reach conclusions based on the fluctuations. The latest trend in customer service is that customers want to know how their concerns and feedback are being addressed by the organization.

Many a times, organizations ask customers to give their feedback, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. Customers that provide the feedback now want to know how exactly it is being catered to. Have their concerns been taken care of? Are there any incentives being offered on the feedback? These questions need to be answered for the customers to trust the organization. A customer support team, wary of all the latest trends and details will realize what the customer exactly wants and will deliver that to them. On the contrary, another team which fails to do the homework will not provide the customers with what they want and would later rue the low conversion rates.

Know How to Turn Complaints into a positive Experience

A good customer support team should know the art of turning a complaint or a bad experience into a positive experience. They should know that customers calling in with complaints are not frustrated with them but are just irritated because of the situation.

There are two ways of handling a complaint. You can either worsen the situation even more with ignorant reasoning or you can give the customer the understanding they require and go towards finding a solution with mutual agreement. The latter is without a doubt the better stance and an trademark of great support teams.

Handling a complaint might look like a hassle, but there are few directions you can follow to reach consensus. The CARP formula is considered as the best method of effectively solving a complaint and turning into a positive experience for both the company and the customer.

Control by owning the situation
Acknowledge problem or the issue
Refocus the conversation
Problem solution

Reach Out to the Level a Customer Wants

The worst customer support teams are those, which follow a script and do not do anything out of their comfort zone. A customer support team should know when and how to step out of their zone and to reach out to the customers level. This is exactly where the team’s communicative skills come into perspective. They can be developed and coherently taught during training sessions. Instead of using negative connotations such as ‘We can’t’ the team members should use phrases such as ‘Here is what we can do for you or offer you.’ With the proper use of positive terms, the customer will feel at ease and eventually adjust to the warm conversation.

Importance of Branding for B2B Companies

Posted on May 14, 2019June 23, 2021 by David Dinh

It is no secret that everything B2B companies do is to get more sales leads – we love conversions. Branding is a very misplaced concept; companies think that by spamming clients with information about their products and services, they are enhancing their brand experience. Customers however, want value proposition, they want connection.

B2B branding is more important due to proliferation of stakeholders for the following reasons:

Strong Influence on Purchase Decisions

The key to differentiation as per the notion held by business marketers is to provide quality, availability, service, and pricing. However, research suggests that business buyers decisions depend on the vendor’s reputation and are a lot less value-driven in comparison to customers. Branding was considered by B2B purchasing decision makers as a central element of a supplier’s value proposition. However, importance of brands varies by market. For tangible sectors, brands are perceived as more relevant, whereas in less tangible segments like financial services, they are considered less relevant.

Missing the Brand Message

Not focusing on the elements that customers care about is one of the biggest blunders B2B companies commit. Customers care about level of specialized expertise, honesty and responsibility across the supply chain, whereas B2B suppliers focus on global reach, sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Lack of confidence in the brand’s value proposition may be the result of this discrepancy. If B2B companies want to stay relevant to their clients, they should refocus on the issues their clients care about.

Communicating a consistent brand experience is very important. A cross functional team should be developed for this reason, incorporating perspectives other than those from the marketing department.

Integrating Brand’s Image

All of the company’s marketing tactics need to integrate brand image. It will enable you to help the client get more leads. Making an advertising campaign integrating client’s brand image and conveying it in a way that provides personal value to the prospective buyer, will facilitate in getting you more than just a seat at the table and closing the deal. For communicating both business and personal values alike, time and space will be limited; therefore, it is integral to find the right balance between the two. Focus too much on one, and it will make you lose the other one.

Brands Drive Profits

In comparison to B2C purchases, B2B purchases arguably matter more. Buy the wrong toothbrush and you can always change the brush when it gets old. However, buy the wrong solar plant and it would affect your company’s earnings. Strong brands-known to make lives of people easier are sought out more and decision makers are willing a premium for them. Strong supplier brands may even aid companies in building their own reputation by association.

What is your opinion? How important is branding for B2B companies? Have you noticed different results by a lighter or heavier emphasis on personal value or brand image? To both companies and customers B2B is a source of tremendous value. To safeguard the assets, organizations need to be more deliberate about developing strategies and tactics.

Content Marketing – Is It Really Helpful For B2B Companies?

Posted on May 9, 2019March 20, 2019 by David Dinh

The number of business owners within the B2B platform participating on social media platforms is increasing day by day. B2B shows continuous growth in the areas of content marketing as seen in higher volumes of online videos, infographics and business blogs. Lead generation and increasing conversions via inbound methods comes easy to companies who realize content is king. The primary and most important goal of the business process – lead generation – is aided by content marketing.

Here are some Content Marketing tips for B2B companies

1. Effective Content is Required

B2B marketing techniques are viewed as rigid and structured by businesses with the traditional mindset. They still adhere to the techniques of direct marketing methods like trade shows, email blast and cold calling for lead generation. A company shares its content through printed material in direct marketing. The game for B2B marketers changed with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing attracts via online media techniques such as SEO, content marketing and SMO. A blog for your website is a top priority since success of inbound marketing depends on effective online content. Your business must prepare content that fits its niche and target audience.

2. Relevant, Engaging Content is the Key

Content creation does not happen easily; it takes time. Fret not about the depth of your knowledge or writing skills. Simply keep your audience in mind for effective content marketing. It assists you in creating engaging and relevant content that further piques the interest of your customer. When the content appears to the reader on a personal level only then leads will be generated. Your business needs to produce good content that resonates with, as well as educates potential clients, when lead generation is your goal.

3. Shows Passion and is Consistently Branded

Inbound B2B buyers prove themselves to be a progressively savvy group who know that they want and where to find it inexpensively and quickly. It is integral for your blogs to be completely connected with your brand and what you represent, in order to achieve the full power of your content for lead generation. Prospective buyers want to know what you can do for them and whether or not you can do it better than the competitor. Contrary to the widespread notion that people buy what you do, people buy why you do it. Customers need to know what you stand for and why you stand for it. Since this sentiment resonates quite strongly with the B2B buyers, it serves as in important reminder while creating a blog. Your leads can see through your passion for your company and its products or solutions. The power of your content marketing affirms itself through your passion – this is something potential leads notice when shopping for their solutions providers.

Remembering the mantra “content is king” pays off in planning your lead generation strategy. The more likely you are to see increases in lead generation through content marketing, the more attractive content is to target market, and it should resonate to them on some level. Do not take the power of content lightly.

Here are the top 4 Platforms for B2B Content Distribution:

1. Facebook Sponsored Posts

Facebook upped its advertisement game during the last year, providing advertisers access to psychographic analytics. The Custom Audiences feature can be used to target users on the basis of their engagement with the site. Creating Lookalike Audiences matching the psychographic profiles of your current customers is easy for content marketers.

Lookalike Audiences and Facebook Custom Audiences both are beneficial for mid to lower funnel content marketing activities. Reaching out free trial subscribers who are not converted yet to paying customers is one example. Quality of the leads you are able to generate will decide the success of your program.

2. LinkedIn

For content marketers, there are three major beneficial content distributions opportunities on LinkedIn:

Publishing– it allows users to publish posts onto the platform directly.
Groups– the likes of Content Marketing Group.
Sponsored Update– updates can be targeted on the basis of the employer and user’s job title.

LinkedIn has free group and publishing features. Even though sponsored updates are expensive in comparison to other social media platforms; however, LinkedIn’s professional audience targeting capabilities are incomparable. For distribution of lead-gated content, it is the perfect platform for whitepapers for instance, where the price you pay for a download is an email address.

3. Reddit Marketing

For the entrepreneurially inclined, reddit curate business-focuses, compelling content. Your involvement with this community is dependent on your success. However, Reddit users are intolerant of brash self-promotion; this platform is tricky with a rule of sharing 10 pieces of other people’s content on each piece of your own.

4. Sales and Account Management Teams

A direct line between your business and the outside world can be provided by your customer facing teams. To help identify questions that the potential buyers, your target audience, are asking, your sales team can be of great help. To find out about the issues your current customers are facing, consult your account management team. To create a content strategy, doing so can significantly helpful. However, in terms of distribution too, a strong, close relationship with both teams can pay huge dividends.

As new platforms keep emerging, success in content distribution is depends on trial and error. Do not be scared to test a paid network at a small budget; however, ensure that you have realistic expectations about your marketing goals and conversion funnel.

Fine Tuning Customer Conversations on Social Media

Posted on May 3, 2019May 6, 2019 by David Dinh

We’ve been in the go to market space for over 15 years and have seen countless enterprise projects who fail to adequately engage and interact with their customers online, especially in the last 5 years over social media.

Guide to Fine Tuning Customer Conversation on Social Media

Here are some tips that will help you master the customer conversation and build a loyal following to your business or brand:

1. Learn about your Audience

The key to success for any business in the industry is understanding their target audience using social media. With the help of tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite, it is possible to determine the age and gender of the social media audience, in addition to a number of other insights. Business can cater campaigns and product offers to their target audience using this knowledge, ultimately leading to a higher return on investment.

Most businesses focus too much on trying to get social media followers to buy from them, use insights to learn what they will like and apply the data to improve conversations with them online, in email and for social conversations.

2. Listen to Feedback

Social media allows the customers to provide feedback – positive or negative – giving the business valuable insight on how customers perceive the business and its offerings. Customers on social media will be more than happy to provide their opinion through posts and direct messages about what they like or dislike. For instance, many companies launch new products on social media to gauge how well it is received by their audience. One can also glean insights from conversation on how customers’ needs are evolving with regards to their offerings, allowing them to cater to their products and services better to customers’ tastes, preferences, and needs. New product ideas can also stem from this insight and optimised campaigns can be sent out to followers to improve reactions and comments.

3. Increase in Web Traffic and Search Ranking

One of the most important benefits of using social media for a business is the increase in web traffic. It helps direct people to the business’s website. Moreover, the higher the number of shares of a business’ posts on social media, the greater its search ranking and online exposure. Use keywords in your post title and subheadings for good results in search media optimisation. Use the data from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to understand what specific search terms were used to discover your product and service, and then educate sales people on these hidden opportunities to increase customer conversion rate to buy from your business.

4. Increasing Brand Awareness

Companies have managed to increase brand awareness with the help of social media with minimal or no budget. Traditional methods of advertising were associated with higher cost of brand awareness strategies. Marketing departments across countries are hiring community managers now in an attempt to increase brand awareness and reach through social media. These community managers foster relationships with the online audience scattered in different locations by developing conversations and engagement with your followers. Brand managers develop one to one interactions via chat, direct messages, email or social with the potential customer. The intimate relationship can be fine tuned by growing the follower base and looking at which demographic segment is growing the fastest, and then fine tuning a message that appeals to this audience.

5. Viral Content

Social media has made sharing content easier and faster. Companies now use social media for content curation or sharing content about their business in particular. All they do is share their brand on their social network accounts. However, companies should keep in mind that if they want customers to share your content with their followers, they need to ensure that their social media content is aligned to the brand and captures the attention of the audience.

6. Get Ahead of Your Competitor

Social media help businesses gain valuable information about their competitors, improving your market intelligence. This information will allow companies to stay ahead of their competitors by making strategic business decisions. For instance, through HubSpot and Hootsuite, businesses can create search streams to monitor their competitors. Based on the results your business can craft a more focused conversation for potential customers or offer a new product which the competitors are missing, thus improving business sales opportunities.

Key Components of B2B eCommerce

Posted on April 30, 2019March 18, 2019 by David Dinh

Higher buyer expectations and technological advances are largely responsible for the rapid growth of B2B eCommerce – and this boost has been welcomed by the business sphere with open arms. Both business buyers and private consumers are flocking towards the new paradigm of eCommerce, and they in return are demanding the same options and convenience from B2B organizations. By simply providing a business-to-consumer way to buy online, an optimal B2B multichannel selling approach cannot be obtained. Reason being that, B2B selling involves complex processes like promotion based on the needs of the individual business buyer and product offerings.

For B2B Enterprise eCommerce effectiveness, platforms should include these 5 key components:

1. Advanced Configurability

The complexities of B2B online selling translate into customer hierarchies, with differing product configuration and marketing, authorization rules and workflows, product portfolios, purchase authorization rules, contract terms, pricing and multiple payment options. Unique processes and technology capabilities is required for a complicated purchasing environment. The B2B channel to support product configuration and sophisticated pricing requires advanced functionality. To ensure that sales representatives do not spend unnecessary time on internal processes and instead can focus on current and new customer sales, authorized users should have access to the system and be empowered to set business rules, by segment and channels, without the need for IT involvement.

2. Single, Global Platform

B2B enterprises that target multiple markets will likely have sales and marketing strategies that are tailored to local market conditions. This includes pricing and offers that vary by market segments or market segments. A centralized platform should be deployed by organizations that allows for global control of customer order and product information, offering the flexibility to adapt order processes, product information and customer orders according to the preferences of customers in a targeted market.

3. Analytics and Segmentation

A number of B2B organizations dedicate resources to analyzing customer, product and sales data; this enables the B2B seller to develop strategies personalized to each customer’s needs offering product mix and optimal pricing. Conversely, numerous B2B organizations find out that their eCommerce platforms are not fully capable of displaying products and updated prices. If such information is not added in, then all the segmentation efforts and analytics go to waste. To enable guided selling through online channels, an effective B2B eCommerce platform ought to include tools that can execute rules and strategies based on advanced analytics.

4. Sophisticated Workflows

To provide insights into all aspects of the order across channels including automatic notifications to customers regarding their order status, delivery dates for products and services and monitoring of order processes, an effective B2B platform must have capabilities. The eCommerce platform should provide consistent product and order information and should be the single source of truth across divisions, brands and business units.

5. B2C Best Practices

B2C online shopping have changed the expectations of the buyers, and B2B eCommerce platforms thus need to include better product content, dynamic on-site searching, mobile sites and apps, social integration, personalization, user reviews and video. Best practices from the B2C landscape need to be integrated within the rapidly evolving B2B sphere for it to remain effective. This can mean configuring product displays and prices according to a client company’s business rules, permitting the company’s buyers to choose only among approved products and make purchases within spending limits.

B2B organizations have special needs when purchasing online, and these needs should be taken care of apart from the five key components of B2B eCommerce platform.

What are the Importance of Customer Trust and Ways to Maintain It?

Posted on April 25, 2019April 29, 2019 by David Dinh

Whether your business has just been launched or has been successfully working for a while, long term success is highly dependable on customer’s trust. The increase or decrease of customer’s trust on your business can have a major impact on the profit and loss of your company. This is the reason why it is important to build the trust of your customers and maintain it.

Here are some effective ways of building and maintaining the Customer Trust

1. Enhancing the Purchasing Process

The best way to make your customers happy is to make the purchasing process as easy and smooth as possible. When the customer buys a product from you and faces no issues throughout the process, from placing the order to having it delivered at their home, then he/she is bound to return. The happier the customer is with the entire purchasing process, the higher the chances of them trusting you with their future orders as well because they have started trusting you based on their initial smooth purchasing experience.

enhancing purchasing process infographic — Image Source: customersthatstick

According to our experience, 85% customers say if they receive an outstanding customer service then they are willing to pay more for the products.

2. Communicating with Customers

The best way to maintain the trust of your customers is to communicate with them on regular basis. To do so, interaction through social media is your best bet. Whether the customer wants to know about your products or services or leave a feedback on your social media page, always reply promptly. Aside from this, post regular updates about your company and your products so that customers stay updated. All the posts, comments, and messages must be done in a friendly, welcoming, and professional manner. If your response is impolite, rude, or in any way unwelcoming, you are bound to lose the trust and even the respect of potential customers. Ensure that the tone is warm, friendly, and helpful so that the potential customers start trusting you and the trust of your existing customer base is maintained.

3. Improving Customer Services

Customer services offered by your business must be strong. When a customer calls with a problem or an issue, the top priority must be to enhance the customer’s satisfaction and experience. It is essential to make the customer feel important. Ensure that all your customer care employees are trained to warmly welcome the customers, help them out in any way possible; making sure that the customer is satisfied in the end. Another important thing is to get their feedback and also check back to ensure that the problem has really been resolved. Ask them to rate the service they had just received as this will make them feel their opinion and feedback is valuable to your company.

improving customer service infographic — Image Source: zendesk

First impressions really do last forever. According to a survey, 24% of customers continue to seek services from the same vendor for two or more years if they had a great first experience with them while 39% customers avoid seeking services from vendors after a bad first experience.

4. Never Promise What Can’t Be Delivered

This is one of the most common mistakes many businesses make. Many sales professionals feel it is wrong to say no to a customer for anything, which is why they assure them that they will receive their product/solve their problem in a specific timeframe, when in reality, it isn’t possible to meet that deadline. It is of utmost importance that you don’t lie, exaggerate, or make false promises to your customers – it is a sure-fire way of losing trust and ruining your company’s credibility.

There are numerous ways of enhancing your sales but it is important to make sure that adapting those ways doesn’t lose the trust of your customers in your business. Coming up with more ways to building more trust in your customers and working hard to maintain it is the most effective way you can lead your company towards success.

How to Maximize your Lead Generation Efforts?

Posted on April 22, 2019April 25, 2019 by David Dinh

To many marketers, B2B lead generation is a complex labyrinth. It can be due to two reasons- firstly, people fail to comprehend that successful B2B lead generation comprises of activities that are hard to pin down and quantify, and secondly, everyone is seeking out for one that killer lead tactic that will right all wrongs.

Here are the ways on how Maximize Lead Generation efforts

Here, we are going to talk about few B2B lead generation practices that ought to be used in some combination to enable marketers to effectively build highly qualified leads.

1. Seminars and Webinars

The most effective B2B lead generation tactic involves events like webinars and seminars. Instant magic occurs when a prospective client sees that you seem nice enough, offer valuable advice and have answers for the difficulties they are facing at the moment. The content created in your webinars and seminars can also be turned into trust building asset.

2. Direct Email Marketing

We all want to achieve larger number of leads however, the more personal you get the better it is. Targeting 100 prospects a month by reaching out to them with a personalized letter outlining a plan of action will give you far better results than any other form of mass communication.

2. Paid Traffic

Advertising becomes all the more effective when you use other lead generation in tandem to supplement your primary efforts. Anyone can spend a little money and throw some ads and maybe generate some leads with minimal efforts. However, these leads are often unqualified and uneducated. Invest in teaching how to identify and draw the right clients in order to create the highest quality leads.

3. Sponsors

The best form of lead generation is the right kind of referrals thrown your way. However, only a few people proactively partake in this form of lead generation, it happens accidentally mostly. Sponsorship brings brand-awareness, leads and traction in a targeted way that is hard to achieve for many other marketing-channels.

4. Blogging

Blog minus intention leads to immediate blogging burnout. Answer the questions that your prospective clients are asking or thinking while considering your product and services as a solution. You need to start answering questions in order to make blogging pay as a lead generation source. You can turn series of relevant posts into eBooks or videos once you get good at it.

5. Social Relationship Building

To build and nurture relationships, social media as a lead generation tool is really powerful. Think about influencing and adding value around 50 prospects instead of using it as a broadcast tool. Go to LinkedIn and find out few groups where your prospects hang out and look for advice. Using Linkedin’s Sales Navigator tool start building prospect lists in these groups.

6. Networking

See networking as a tool to for connecting others rather than getting connected if you want networking to pay. Reach into your existing network and find a handful of people that need to meet some shining stars in your network. You become a lead magnet when you view networking as an opportunity to help others by building bridges.

In order to create lead momentum, you have to employ a number of lead generation tactics working together.

What are the most Common B2B Marketing Problems?

Posted on April 18, 2019April 24, 2019 by David Dinh

The B2B world is in shades of grey, and while there is no single right choice, having a number of choices makes choosing the right one for you even more difficult. How do you allocate your budget? Which markets do you go after? How do you prioritize what comes next?

Marketers have never faced as many challenges as they do today, whether it is figuring out what goal they are chasing, time management or ROI (return on investment).

Here is our view of the most common problems B2B marketers are facing

1. Using Social Media to Generate Customers and Revenue

There was a time when businesses hardly knew what to do with social media and it was a toy to play with. However, nowadays companies know of business value in social media marketing. Turning social engagement into dollars is the tricky part though. Social media presence is not enough, knowing how to use social media to target, engage and nurture social following will build up leads for your business.

2. Pinpointing the right people

Marketers need to reach, attract and engage all stakeholders in buying decisions to have a shot at success. Getting the right messages to the right people at the time becomes a major challenge. These are complex relationships with over four in five (81%) of B2B purchases involving multiple decision-makers.

3. Keeping Up With Marketing Trends and Strategies

The last decade witnesses marketing going through a lot of transformations. From print media the marketing focus has been shifted to online media. Additionally, last decade also witnessed the decline of cold calling and direct mail. Communication with potential customers has become more efficient and effective because of new technological tools. For two-way communication and feedback collection, social media has risen as a dominant platform. How do you stay current when new technologies keep popping up, new trends emerge and different strategies are emerged?

4. Generating Awareness and Driving Traffic

You have to get the attention of your audience and get them interested in your product, service or business, before you can start generating leads for your sales team to convert into customers. Some marketers do not know that for highest returns, which channel they should focus their efforts on. Conversely, a number of marketers face the challenge of not having a large pool of interested people.

5. Increasing and Proving ROI

Marketers are held to a higher standard with the availability of advanced analytic tools. Simply doing marketing is no longer enough, in terms of leads, revenue and customers you need to able to understand the value of each of your efforts. You need to prove that your return on investment is high enough to warrant that effort, time, and money.

What are the other common marketing problems in the world of B2B in your opinion? Share with us in the comments section below.