The communication service industry took a well-documented hit in 2015 – and it’s expected to continue this year. According to Gartner, worldwide spending fell 8.3% in 2015, and it’s projected to fall an additional 1.2% in 2016. Yet, with the right approach to lead generation, communication service companies can weather this storm and use it to build strong and resilient sales pipelines for longterm success.
With spending on the decline, it’s more important than ever to establish market dominance and ensure your target audience is well aware of your value when compared to the competition. And a key way to accomplish this is through lead generation, which involves initiating buyer interest in your services, so you have a continuous stream of qualified leads to nurture, close, and upsell.
Here’s how to get started:
1. Create buyer personas. Your buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They’re created based on the data you have about your current buyers. As a quick snapshot for context, “Greg” could be the CIO of a global organization who wants to leverage technology to edge out the competition. He reports to the CEO, and is interested in strategy and results-oriented decisions.
By building a more detailed understanding of Greg (the CIO role), you can ensure that the messaging on your website and in your content resonates with him – thus improving conversions and generating new leads. Buyer personas can become quite detailed and based on deeper insights found within the sales process. As your personas grow, these buyer personas will allow your team to offer a stronger value proposition and more accurate and targeted messaging. You know exactly what he’s looking for, so you can present your services in an appealing way.
2. Revisit your website design. B2B customers of communication service companies research vendors and their competitors online before they even think about reaching out to sales. As such, your website is probably going to be the first impression they have of your company. That means it needs to be attractive and appealing to your audience, so it can operate as your best salesperson. To that end, we recommend leveraging a contemporary and user-friendly website design that communicates the benefits of your service. Use clear navigation so users can easily find what they need – and remove anything that could distract visitors from converting, such as alternative calls-to-action and unnecessary photos and text.
And most importantly, don’t use sliders on your homepage. They don’t convert, aren’t mobile-friendly, and actually have a negative impact on SEO. Instead, try the Hero Layout, which is used by Spotify, Square, and Dropbox. It features a single content section with one clear goal that takes up the entire first fold of your website. It feels simple and fresh – and it's easy to directly test value proposition messaging in order to quickly determine effectiveness.
3. Leverage content offers and gated content. Gated content is premium, branded content that your visitors can only access after entering key information like their email address, phone number, job title, location, and company name and size. Once the form is complete, your prospect gets access to the content they need – and your company can use their contact information to nurture them with targeted communications over time.
When creating gated content for communication service companies, we recommend focusing on highly valuable and in-depth resources that address your audience’s specific needs, so they understand it was created just for them. For example, if you market to device manufacturers, create white papers with high-level advice on how to manage connected devices, reduce operation costs, improve the customer experience, and drive customer loyalty. Feature this content prominently on your website, in newsletters, and on social media to make sure your target market knows it’s available.
54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than traditional paid marketing. – HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014
Related: 5 Demand Generation Best Practices for IT Service Companies
4. Measure your results. Routinely measure your results to identify how well your website and content efforts are generating leads. To get started, measure your conversion rates based on pages, offers, and channels. From there, use those results to improve your website. For example, if a lot of visitors land on a certain page but always leave without taking the intended action, test different messaging options in an effort to retain those visitors. Make different content offers until you find the right approach that encourages those visitors to stick around and become qualified leads.
Related: How to Improve B2B Website Conversion Rates
SOURCES:
Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3186517
B2B Marketing and Growth Agency.
Grow your B2B business boldly. Ironpaper is a B2B marketing agency. We build growth engines for marketing and sales success. We drive demand generation campaigns, ABM programs, B2B content, sales enablement, qualified leads, and B2B marketing efforts.
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