In the past few weeks, we have collaborated with the CMO Council in hosting a series of dinners with marketing leaders across the U.S. Recently we travelled to Seattle, the hub of a number of big technology and telecommunications companies, and were thrilled to have marketing executives share their time and their thoughts concerning business challenges with us.
The SMB market, they expressed, is the next most profitable business line, generating more than two-thirds of the private sector jobs and helped boost the economy out of the last economic decline, as reported by the U.S. Small Business Administrator. However, many of the marketing leaders voiced difficulties as they shift focus towards this lucrative segment of consumers. Below we’ve listed the top three challenges brought up by marketing executives as well as solutions for overcoming these business obstacles.
Challenge #1: Cost-Effective Targeting Of SMBs At Scale
A major productivity software company in Seattle expressed a need to find and target SMBs cost effectively in order to operate at scale. While businesses often employ account-based marketing techniques in order to fully understand enterprise-level customer needs and enable specifically targeted, consultative engagement, the same amount of time often cannot be devoted to smaller business targets.
Solution #1: Start With Understanding The Needs Of Clusters Of Small Businesses
Targeted, one-to-one communication remains the best method for engaging prospects. Hence, companies must adopt account-based marketing tactics and then adapt these techniques, to be able to efficiently operate while targeting SMB customers. As best practice, group together small businesses that possess similar needs or behaviours in order to execute campaigns that will align with the state and needs of all of these businesses at scale.
By paying attention to these business cues—things that businesses have done, their investment decisions, and the strategies and attitudes that are implied through their activities—marketers can find new solutions by discovering insights into the readiness and willingness of SMBs.
Challenge #2: Using The 3 C’s To Boost SMB Engagement: The Right Content, At The Right Place And The Right Time
Traditional marketing challenges exist when targeting SMBs, namely the need to match the right messaging with the right targets in order to entice, educate and ultimately engage prospects. A business application company told us that despite SMBs being their fastest growing segment, they still require ways to build awareness without traditional media. Another telecommunications firm similarly voiced to the need to understand where SMBs consume content in order to better strategize methods to reach them.
Solution #2: Use Technology To Discover SMB’s True Needs, Interests And Most Engaged Channels
In a study from CEB earlier this year, small business owners shared that they increasingly turn to social media not only to promote their businesses but also to gather information from vendors and suppliers. In 2014, half of the respondents relied on social media to learn about vendors— an almost 32 percent increase since 2012. Learning about the channels SMBs use to gather information, as well as the types of information they are seeking, is a first step in figuring out the ideal methods for designing and distributing content to reach this audience.
Challenge #3: Data Overload
When we commissioned Forrester to conduct a survey of over 100 B2B marketing leaders to understand their challenges and the technologies used, 67 percent agreed that the problem is not the lack of data, but rather being able to draw insight from that data.
A software company mentioned that they understand that marketers need to be more analytical these days, but that they struggle to figure out how to align analytics with hitting goals.
Solution #3: Use Predictive Analytics To Filter The Noise In Data
Understand what you are trying to achieve before jumping right into the data or evaluating technology solutions. Turning away from traditional media and mass communications often means a more direct, one-to-one communications strategy. Using predictive analytics to analyze the messages that have resonated with your best customers can help you continue to select and approach the right targets, and determine the types of content and offers that will interest them the most.
Author: Stephanie Kong
Originally posted at radius.com
