MAIN INSIGHT 12
Kathryn Thomas
DIRECTOR OF EMEA MARKETING
Have business attitudes changed in the post pandemic world?
I don’t think organisations’ attitudes to B2B sales have changed significantly, we’re all human and that humanity is the heart of all marketing. We are always talking to humans, so it’s important to consider whether we are talking in language that the customer understands as being relevant to their business.
What role do you think humans play in an increasingly digital buyer journey?
Both the human and digital elements are essential in the buyer journey. You cannot have a digital experience that is divorced from the human experience. Marketers must take a very customer centric approach to sales and have both digital and personal communication.
Digital gives you the ability to cast a wider net, but you still need to be targeted to ensure that your sales team are talking about the customers’ pain points and demonstrating that they understand your customers’ business. That has to be mirrored across the sales and outreach strategy, and organisations need to ensure that both sides of the coin are telling the same story.
There are many ways that you can bring human elements to digital communication, such as adapting the web experience. When someone comes to your website, how can you customise the interaction to their pain points, or could you use the chat with some human intervention to support deeper personalised conversation?
Marketers must take a very customer centric approach to sales and have both digital and personal communication.
We try to create a map that shows wider intent for the sales team, so they can understand who is coming to the site and engaging with us.
How important is it for your organisation to track buyers’ digital activities before proactively trying to market to them?
Sales teams can waste a huge amount of time simply working through a sales target list from A to Z. When using this approach, only a tiny percentage of the people they reach out to will actually be in-market at any given time. Marketing can warm those people up, and when they’re ready for a sales conversation, sales can focus on the 5% that actually are in-market.
We have a suite of tools that allow us to track intent, like most organisations. We try to create a map that shows wider intent for the sales team, so they can understand who is coming to the site and engaging with us. Site analytics tools can enable the sales team to engage with potential customers.
What changes should organisations make for more closely aligned digital and telemarketing functions?
The telemarketing agencies that are successful don’t treat telemarketing as just a volume exercise. Many potential customers won’t answer telephone calls if they don’t recognise the number, but we know there’s a valuable conversation to be had. It’s critical for organisations to establish relationships and connections, so that they can reach those people in-market.
While all B2B marketing spend is growing, most customers can’t tell the difference between one B2B brand digital experience and another. Going back to the idea that all communication is human, we need to have B2B digital experiences that aren’t vanilla. Organisations must put their unique voice and perspective into their digital marketing, and that will support telemarketing.
Organisations must put their unique voice and perspective into their digital marketing, and that will support telemarketing.
Box is a cloud content management company that empowers enterprises to change how they work by securely connecting their people, information and applications. Founded in 2005, Box powers more than 87,000 businesses globally, including AstraZeneca, General Electric, P&G, and The GAP.
