You walk into Home Depot to buy a rake because you need to do some yard work and then decide to browse the aisles to get ideas for your dream kitchen (that you just started dreaming about and don’t have the time or budget for yet). You glance through the pre-built setups to get a sense of your style and learn what options are available.

As you’re walking away, rake in hand, a sales associate stops you and asks you to sign up today for a free home consultation to start your dream kitchen immediately and the option to sign up for a payment plan. 

You’re immediately struck with anxiety and fear because you didn’t intend to do this today. You were simply browsing and finding out the information available to you so you can decide down the road.

You leave the store feeling rushed and like you’re just a number. You do get your dream kitchen two years later but from Lowe’s.

That sounds like a rough experience, right? Your customers feel this way when you put a demo CTA (call to action) at the end of every content you distribute.

They may have landed on your site to learn more about marketing automation software and are nowhere near the final stretch to the demo request. And when they are ready, they’ll remember that experience and search for other options (aka your competition).

This article explores the importance of a smooth customer journey for readers and explains how a more personalized marketing approach can help you achieve it. 

Key takeaways: 

• Understanding the three marketing funnel stages is crucial for creating a smooth user journey.
• Incorporating both hard and soft CTAs into your content is essential.
• Email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing leads. 
• Leading readers down the marketing funnel naturally is crucial for creating a seamless user journey and boosting conversions.

Understanding the marketing funnel

Let’s talk about the marketing funnel. It’s the journey that potential customers take from first hearing about your brand to purchasing. There are three stages to this funnel: 

• Awareness.
• Consideration.
• Decision.

Awareness

At the awareness stage, you want to create content, like blogs that educate your audience on the benefits of your product or service without being too salesy. An active blog is one of the most favored ways to share content, with 79% of companies using it reporting a positive ROI ROI. Within your blog, you can add CTAs to things like newsletters, social media channels and other engagement-focused CTAs.

Lavender.AI does this throughout their blog, guiding readers to more relevant content after reading the article, naturally moving them through the funnel. No demo. No hard pitch.

Consideration

In the consideration stage, potential customers are weighing up their options, so you must provide detailed information to help them make an informed decision. This is the perfect time to offer additional resources like white papers and case studies to help build trust and showcase your expertise.

In the example below, Demandbase ends their article with social proof — inspiring readers to read a case study about the topic from the article, giving context and value to the information. 

Decision

Finally, in the decision stage, you want to make it easy for potential customers to convert without being too pushy or aggressive. A clear and compelling CTA is crucial, but creating a seamless user experience that doesn’t feel forced is important.

ClickUp uses a free demo CTA in an article on the best ClickUp templates. The placement feels relative and fitting because the reader would likely want to use the templates they just read about.

More than 40% of the evaluated B2B SaaS websites had a “Get a demo” CTA, according to the State of the Interactive Product Demo 2023 report. So while these CTAs are often used, their placement can make or break a conversion.

Your CTAs should speak to where customers are and what they are looking for and should never feel pushy or forced. The key to conversions is creating a nurturing flow that gives buyers the valuable information they need to make a purchasing decision. 

Dig deeper: How to optimize your content for each step of the buyer’s journey

Incorporating CTAs into content

Just like tacos, there are two types of CTAs: hard and soft.

A hard CTA is a more aggressive call-to-action, like asking potential customers to schedule a demo or sign up for a free trial. These types of CTAs are often used in the decision stage of the funnel when the customer is ready to take action.

On the other hand, a soft CTA is a more subtle approach, like asking readers to download a free resource or learn more about your product. Soft CTAs are often used earlier in the funnel, during the awareness or consideration stages, to build trust and credibility with potential customers.

But here’s the thing: not every article needs a hard CTA. Sometimes a soft CTA can be just as effective, if not more so. By offering valuable resources or information, you can build relationships with potential customers and guide them naturally down the funnel without being too pushy.

For example, if you’re writing an article about the benefits of project management software, a soft CTA could be to offer a free guide on how to improve team productivity. This type of CTA provides value to the reader and helps establish your brand as a thought leader in the space.

Another effective soft CTA is to invite readers to engage with your brand on social media. By asking them to follow your company page or join a relevant group, you can build a community around your brand and keep potential customers engaged with your content.

Ultimately, the key to incorporating CTAs into your content is to provide value to the reader and guide them naturally down the funnel. So, don’t be afraid to mix it up and experiment with different types of CTAs to see what works best for your audience.

Nurturing leads with email marketing

Now that we’ve discussed CTAs, let’s dive into email marketing and how it can help nurture leads.

Email marketing is a powerful tool for guiding potential customers down the funnel and building strong relationships. By sending personalized and relevant content to your audience, you can keep them engaged with your brand and encourage them to take action. Some marketers refer to this as one-to-one content marketing.

So, how can you create effective email campaigns that naturally lead readers down the funnel? Here are a few tips:

Segment your audience

Instead of sending the same email to everyone on your list, segment your audience based on their interests, behaviors and where they are in the funnel. This allows you to send more personalized and relevant content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to take action.

Provide value

Just like with CTAs, it’s important to provide value to your readers in your email campaigns. This could be through offering exclusive content, discounts, or helpful tips and advice. By providing value, you establish yourself as a trusted source and keep potential customers engaged with your brand.

Use engaging subject lines

Your subject line is the first thing your reader sees, so it’s important to make it engaging and relevant. A good subject line should be clear, concise and encourage the reader to open the email.

Include clear CTAs

Just like with your content, your emails should include clear and relevant CTAs that guide the reader down the funnel. Whether it’s inviting them to download a resource or sign up for a free trial, make sure your CTAs are easy to find and align with your overall marketing strategy.

Measure success

To know if your email campaigns are effective at driving sales, you need to measure their success. Track metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates to see what’s working and what’s not. Use this information to refine your campaigns and improve their effectiveness over time.

Dig deeper: 6 tactics to create recession-proof email marketing

Meet your buyers where they are

Leading readers down the marketing funnel naturally is crucial for creating a smooth and enjoyable user journey while boosting conversions. With a solid understanding of the marketing funnel, effective use of CTAs and well-crafted email campaigns, you can guide readers through each stage without being too aggressive. 

Remember, hard CTAs aren’t always necessary — soft CTAs can be just as powerful in nurturing leads. By tracking and analyzing the success of your efforts, you can continuously improve your strategy and achieve even better results. So, put these tips into action and watch your marketing efforts thrive.

The post The art of natural funneling: How to lead your readers without forced CTAs appeared first on MarTech.

If your B2B go-to-market strategy doesn’t prioritize delivering a personalized and engaging experience for your audience, you could be missing out on potential customers and growth opportunities. Fortunately, conversational marketing can help you create the kind of experience that modern buyers expect. 

This article is a guide to conversational marketing and why it should be a key component of your B2B go-to-market strategy.

Key takeaways:

• Conversational marketing improves engagement and conversion rates in B2B.
• A conversational marketing growth strategy creates a more personalized and engaging experience, improves conversion rates and builds stronger customer relationships.
• To build your strategy, identify your audience, select tools, create a messaging framework, train your team and measure results.

Defining conversational marketing

At its core, conversational marketing is a personalized and real-time approach to engaging with potential customers. It involves leveraging conversational tools like chatbots, messaging apps and live chat to interact with prospects and customers. 

By using these channels, businesses can create a more natural, human-like experience that fosters engagement and builds relationships with their audience. Instead of one-way communication, conversational marketing creates an ongoing dialogue between the business and the customer. 

Who is conversational marketing for?

Conversational marketing offers a more effective way for all types of businesses — ecommerce, real estate, online coaching, brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants and more — to build and manage relationships that drive success.

For B2B companies, conversational marketing provides a unique opportunity to engage with potential customers in a personalized and real-time manner, helping to establish a stronger connection and build trust. 

More than half of demand and account-based marketers use conversation automation technologies, according to Forrester’s State of Demand and ABM Tactic Survey. And it’s not just a passing trend, as 43% of these marketers plan to increase their budget for an online chat as a conversational delivery channel. 

By leveraging conversational tools like chatbots and messaging apps, B2B businesses can create a more natural and seamless experience for prospects, guiding them through the sales funnel and answering any objections or questions they may have. This ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and stronger customer relationships.

Here’s an example:

As a SaaS company selling project management tools to enterprise-level businesses, you implement a conversational marketing strategy to engage busy executives looking to streamline their team’s workflows and increase productivity.

You create a chatbot with a messaging framework that includes responses to common objections, personalized product recommendations and solutions to common pain points based on the user’s needs.

When a potential customer visits your website, the chatbot engages them in a conversation, asking questions about their business and providing real-time answers and solutions based on their responses.

The potential customer is connected to a live chat representative for more personalized assistance if the chatbot can’t answer a specific question. This approach makes customers feel heard, valued and supported, increasing the likelihood of conversion into paying customers.

Dig deeper: Let’s chat about this product

Benefits of conversational marketing in your B2B sales efforts

When it comes to B2B sales, the journey from prospect to customer can be a bumpy ride. Traditional sales cycles can be long, complicated and full of obstacles that make it tough for buyers to get the information they need to decide. That’s where conversational marketing comes in to help smooth things out.

With conversational marketing, buyers can engage with your business more naturally and personally. They can ask questions and get answers in real time without having to wade through a maze of phone menus or fill out endless web forms.

Conversational marketing empowers buyers to take control of their own journey while still providing the guidance and support they need to make informed decisions.

Up to 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and sellers will be happening in digital channels by 2025, according to Gartner. This emphasizes incorporating digital strategies like conversational marketing into your overall B2B GTM strategy.

By meeting buyers where they are and providing personalized experiences, conversational marketing helps remove the roadblocks that can slow down the B2B sales cycle. 

And the best part? You can measure the impact of your conversational marketing efforts with metrics like engagement rates, conversion rates and customer satisfaction scores. So you can continuously optimize your strategy and keep improving to deliver an even better experience for your customers.

Some other benefits include:

• Boost your website’s conversion rates.
• Create genuine connections with your buyers.
• Speed up your sales process.
• Save your sales team’s valuable time by handling repetitive inquiries.
• Appeal to the communication style of your target audience.
• Be available 24/7 with asynchronous conversations.

Personalization’s role in conversational marketing

Almost 7 out of 10 customers expect a consistent and personalized experience across all channels, whether online or offline? It’s no secret that customers crave personalized attention, but it’s surprising how many companies still struggle to deliver on this expectation.

For B2B businesses, personalization is even more critical as buyers seek customized experiences with the brands they interact with. Using these personalization tactics, you can improve the overall customer experience and create a sense of trust and credibility with your audience.

Personalization can take many forms in conversational marketing, including:

• Addressing customers by name and customizing the conversation based on their previous interactions with your brand.
• Offering personalized product or service recommendations based on the customer’s needs and preferences.
• Using data to provide targeted messaging and offers to specific segments of your audience.
• Allowing customers to choose their preferred communication channels and tailoring your messaging accordingly.

Dig deeper: What is personalized marketing and how is it used today?

Creating a conversational marketing GTM strategy

Are you ready to take your B2B marketing strategy to the next level? Creating a conversational marketing GTM strategy is a powerful way to engage with your customers, build authentic relationships and drive sales. To get started, it’s important to follow these key steps.

Step 1: Identify your audience

When identifying your audience, you should consider their unique characteristics, pain points and preferences. Take the time to research your target market and create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. This will help you understand what motivates them, what challenges they face and what kind of messaging will resonate with them.

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to choose the right channels and tools for your conversational marketing. For example, consider using Facebook Messenger or Twitter direct messages if your audience is mainly on social media. However, a chatbot might be more effective if they prefer email or your website.

It’s also important to consider the stage of the buyer’s journey that your audience is in. For instance, if you’re targeting customers still in the awareness stage, you may want to focus on educational content and answering frequently asked questions. On the other hand, if you’re targeting customers in the decision stage, you may want to provide more personalized recommendations and offers to encourage them to purchase.

Step 2: Select the right tools

Selecting the right tools is critical to any conversational growth strategy. There are numerous chatbot and conversational marketing platforms available in the market.

Before selecting one, identify what features are important to you, such as ease of use, integration with your existing tech stack, customer support and pricing. Some popular chatbot tools include:

• ManyChat: A popular platform for building chatbots on Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps.
• Drift: A conversational marketing platform for B2B businesses that lets you personalize conversations and connect with potential leads.
• Intercom: A messaging platform that allows you to chat with customers in real time across your website, app and social media.

Ultimately, the right tool will depend on your business needs and budget. Consider the features essential to your conversational growth strategy and select a tool that fits those needs.

Step 3: Create a messaging framework

You need a clear and effective messaging framework to achieve your conversational marketing goals. Define your value proposition and develop key messages that support it, focusing on benefits rather than just features. Don’t forget to consider your audience’s pain points and tailor your language accordingly.

Create guidelines for tone and voice to maintain consistency in all communications, whether through a chatbot, email or phone conversation. This will make it easier to train your team and measure the effectiveness of your conversational marketing efforts. A messaging framework lets you track how well your messages resonate with your audience and adjust as needed.

Step 4: Train your team

To implement an effective conversational marketing strategy, it’s crucial to train your team. Here are some steps to consider:

• Review your messaging framework and chatbot scenarios, ensuring your team is comfortable handling any questions or objections. 
• Establish guidelines for when to escalate a customer to a human representative and provide thorough training on the necessary tools and technology. 
• Regularly analyze chatbot conversations for areas of improvement and provide ongoing feedback to your team.

Step 5: Measure results

Measuring the success of your conversational marketing strategy is essential for making improvements and demonstrating value to stakeholders. But with so many metrics to track, it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

First, determine what goals you want to achieve with your strategy. Is it to increase engagement, drive more leads or boost sales? Once you have identified your goals, you can select the metrics to help you measure progress toward achieving them.

• Engagement: Includes metrics such as open rates, click-through rates and time spent in conversation. These metrics can help you understand your audience’s engagement with your content and if they find it valuable.
• Conversion rates: This measures how many people took the desired action after engaging with your chatbot, such as filling out a lead form or making a purchase.
• Customer satisfaction: This can be measured through customer feedback surveys, ratings and reviews. By understanding how satisfied your customers are with your chatbot experience, you can improve and continue to provide value to your audience.
• ROI: This involves measuring the cost of implementing your strategy and comparing it to the revenue generated from your chatbot. By demonstrating a positive ROI, you can show the value of your strategy to stakeholders and secure resources for future growth.

Boost B2B sales and customer satisfaction with conversational marketing

If you want to boost your B2B sales and keep your customers happy, consider adopting conversational marketing as part of your strategy. By engaging with customers in real-time, you can build stronger relationships, accelerate sales cycles and free up your sales team to focus on more important tasks. 

With a little effort and the right tools, you can increase website conversions and cater to the preferences of modern buyers. So why not start implementing conversational marketing in your B2B sales cycle today? By embracing the power of conversational marketing, you can stay ahead of the competition and deliver a superior customer experience that will keep your clients coming back for more. 

The post Conversational marketing: A guide to a key B2B GTM strategy appeared first on MarTech.