Prior to becoming an entrepreneur we worked for many years as an in-house market leaders. During this time, we began to closely follow a few companies that were thought leaders in B2B Marketing.
These reports are often very enterprise-focused. This is a problem. As small-business email marketing consultants, we are more interested in the implications of these findings for business leaders. Here's what entrepreneurs can learn about this report.
1. Email is still an important tool.
Many people predict the demise of email campaigns every year. Email marketing trends are still a strong channel. In fact, it was the best performing channel in 2021. Now is the right time to invest in email marketers if you haven't given it enough attention or decided to reduce its importance.
2. You need to think more about email blasts or newsletters.
Gartner reports that respondents mention difficulties in aligning their transactional email strategy and the right messaging. You need to develop sophisticated nurture campaigns, also known as "drip email", that are closely aligned with the problems and challenges your customers face -- and how you can solve them.
Small businesses often only send out basic email marketing campaigns. This includes a monthly effective newsletter strategy and an occasional "blast" to the entire list when they have something important to say. Buyers expect more from businesses today. If you don't offer it, your competition will gladly do so and steal the business.
3. Diversifying your marketing mix is a good idea.
Your current marketing plan might be focused on just a few areas. Most small businesses that we work with have a few core tactics such as email marketing, trade shows, and social media. Maybe they also have a blog where they publish articles. Although it's wonderful to start somewhere, the best companies diversify where they spend their money and time.
How do you choose what next to try? It's a good idea to look at what's already working well. Next, consider what marketing strategies you could use to complement them. If you attend a lot of trade shows, it might be worth adding content marketing to your arsenal. This will allow you to offer your whitepaper or eBook to attendees and digital marketers at the shows. You can try a different angle if social media is really working well. For example, you could create video content or polls to increase engagement.
4. Most likely, you don't get to know your customers enough.
Out of the many small businesses have worked with, we can only count those that took the time to get to know their customers. You will not get results if you don't have a deep understanding of your customers. You can't guess what each customer wants and needs. By creating buyer personas, you can take the time to really understand your customers. This will greatly increase your marketing results.
5. It is now more important than ever to activate your entire funnel
My first observation when we work with a new company is that they only have one aspect of their promotional email marketing strategy. While they might be popular posts on their blog and using social media to promote the top part of the funnel, they are not creating case studies or demos that will improve the bottom. They might also be very good at creating data sheets and sales collateral, but struggle to create useful educational content.
If you only do one part of your funnel well, you will see a drastic reduction in sales and digital marketing results. You won't be able to share your data sheets and brochures with many prospects if you focus on the bottom of the funnel. If you are doing well at the top but neglect the bottom, you will attract many leads but few customers.
Business leaders need to understand the entire buying journey of their prospects by using buyer personas. A content map can be a great tool to help you do this. It allows you to identify the content that your buyers need to succeed. Then you can assess what assets you have, and what needs to be added. Simply put, a funnel that is not complete will lead to insufficient results.
Get tips and advice from the experts to improve your marketing for small businesses
It is possible to succeed in marketing email list your business by understanding the strategies of big names, and simplifying and applying them to your business. The big players are focusing on a few key trends and small businesses that follow them will reap the benefits. Get out there and get creative with your email marketing tool efforts. Expand beyond what you are already doing in marketing. To build a complete funnel experience for potential customers, you need to increase your customer understanding. This will allow you to stay ahead of your competition to win the new business that you want.
