ADAPTING TO THE MODERN B2B BUYER: FACT, PROBLEM, SOLUTION, RESULTS
The fight for the best customers is online—and it is happening now.
Commercial and industrial companies have been slow to adapt to the modern buying process.
Those who act now can gain a significant competitive advantage.
FACT
Your market—the engineers and buyers involved in specifying products and vendors—use the internet for almost all their research. The more technical and complex your product or service, the more important the internet is.
Your market—the engineers and buyers involved in specifying products and vendors—use the internet for almost all their research. The more technical and complex your product or service, the more important the internet is.
In fact, according to a recent study, half of B2B buyers make up their mind before talking to sales reps. Further, more than 70 percent of B2B buyers fully define their needs before engaging with a sales representative, and almost half identify specific solutions before reaching out, according to a new report from CSO Insights, the research division of Miller Heiman G.
What these engineers and buyers want is to learn as much as they can on their own, online, and contact a sales team only on their terms and when they are ready. The internet makes that possible.
Think about it. Before the internet fully matured, people had to talk to salespeople to learn just about everything. Today, they don’t; they have the power to control their own buying process. This phenomenon was coined “The Age of the Customer” by Forrest Research and it has profound implications for vendors.
PROBLEM
While most industrial vendors recognize this fact, very few have a clear strategy to leverage it.
Most industrial companies have been extremely slow to adapt to these changes, simply because no one has made clear to them how the internet fits into selling complex technical products and services. However, the irony is that these complex products are better suited to strategic internet strategy then most consumer products.
Another part of the problem is that most industrial companies don’t realize how much search volume is happening in their niche and are shocked when they find out. It is not uncommon for our niche clients to go from 150 to 1,500 to 15,000 and even 70k+ visitors per month from ideal customer profiles.
Most industrial companies are structured much like they were before the internet. Covid changed that a bit—shutting down tradeshows and making in-person selling impossible—but few have really developed a clear digital marketing and sales strategy. However, industrial companies are waking up and seeing the incredible power to influence the buyer's journey, and it will be those companies that do it first that will be hard to catch.
SOLUTION
It’s really quite simple. Be the “Wikipedia” of your industry! Be that place your prospects go to learn and don't let your competition do it first.
Be the one company in your niche that answers all the questions your market is asking Google. You have the technical expertise they need, and you may never have the chance to show that if it is not on your website first.
For example, when a safety office searches “what makes my below-the-hook lifting device OSHA compliant” (try it) and you are a company that sells lifting equipment, you want to be the one that comes up first in those results.
However, turning this simple concept into controllable growth and market dominance is where things get a little more complicated and where most companies need outside help. There are a number of very different skillsets needed to be really effective—including the CMO for strategy, content strategists, content creators, graphic designers, SEO specialists, and data analytics specialists—just to name a few. Most companies don’t have those resources in-house and that is our niche. We act as an outsourced marketing department with our team of over 50 subject matter experts.
Our engagements typically start with a deep dive into your market followed by a clear goal-driven measurable strategy for which we are accountable.
RESULTS
Educating your market directly correlates to winning better customers and many other benefits you might not have thought of yet.
Our clients literally dominate their markets with relative ease because when I say most industrial companies have been slow to adapt, I mean it. The chances that your competition has adapted are slim, which means there is a window of opportunity to dominate and gain first-mover advantage.
Here is just one example: We have an industrial client who once we help them create educational content, increase their targeted website traffic by 1600% and incoming leads by 650%! They dominated their market to such an extent that when the largest player in their industry went looking for an acquisition, our client was the clear standout. In total, this client went from less than 500 visitors per month to 20,000.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are just a few other benefits of turning your website into “the” place for niche-specific educational content.
Get Advanced Knowledge of Prospective Opportunities
Here is how it works. Let’s say an engineer or plant manager (fill in the technical buyer in your industry) just got word that they are going to be looking into a new project. The first thing that engineer does is search google for answers that will prepare them. They are not buying yet, just learning. Now, let’s say you—as the vendor—have published answers to those questions on your website and you have actually created a guide they can download. Once they enter their basic contact information in exchange for the guide, we know that XYZ company might be entering the market—and you would have insights months or years before your competition.
Build Trust and Credibility
As we now know, the vast majority of the buying process takes place online. Even if you have long-established customer relationships, people are turning over all the time and it is not the older people replacing the young ones! It is not uncommon for a new hire to assume that incumbent vendors are not the best.
This means you need to build those relationships all the time with both existing and new contacts. You need to give the new hires a reason to continue to do business with you and providing them with transparent market information is the best way to do that at scale.
Make Data-Driven Decisions and Increase Company Value
Digital and data go hand in hand. A well-trafficked and tracked website produces a ton of data and insights on industry trends and customer preferences. We assume we know what customers want and we are often wrong, so it is crucial to take advantage of this data.
Think about it. Your website and other digital assets are owned. What other revenue-producing things does the company own? Certainly not the salespeople or customers. Think of your website as a machine, literally. Websites with a lot of traffic from the right people plus the data analytics can be stand-alone assets. In fact, there are sold that way all the time. Websites do not quit, retire, or move to the competition. If you want to sell a company, think about how much more value there would be if you not only produced financials but also reports showing where your customers are coming from (and will keep coming from) along with the ROI data.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
The thing with industrial companies as compared to say technology companies is that things don’t change very fast. This means that the educational content you create will keep producing results for as long as it is relevant. In fact, it is not uncommon for industrial companies that embrace this methodology to write educational blogs article that get hundreds or thousands of visitors every single month for years.
Traditional marketing is mostly one and done. Tradeshows, mailers, advertising. Sure, your brand identity may linger for a while, but it is nominal, which is why we have traditionally looked at marketing as a cost center instead of a revenue source. Those days are over.
All of this is what we call Winning on Brand, which simply means if you are the dominant voice online for your particular niche, you will win in countless ways.
About Cobalt Sales Group
Cobalt Sales Group is a digital sales and marketing agency started by Bob Engelhart after running a manufacturing company for 23 years. Bob started Cobalt because he saw that industrial companies were lagging in how they leveraged the internet and technology as a strategic tool to engage their market—especially as their market gets younger.
That’s why we developed the Blueprint Strategy process where we really dig in and learn everything we need to help you dominate the market. We learn about your products and services, markets, and competitors; we then define the ideal fit customer, buyer personas, and buyer's journey; and we map a clear and measurable strategy that guides our work and makes us accountable for specific results.