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What is Predictive Marketing, and Why Should B2B Marketers Care?

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Predictive marketing is a key buzzword in the marketing world today. But what does predictive marketing mean, and how can it help B2B marketers?  Brafton defines predictive marketing as, “the strategic use of existing customer datasets to identify patterns and anticipate future customer behaviors, sales trends, and marketing outcomes.” Basically, predictive marketing helps you determine which strategies will succeed and which will fail.

For B2B marketers, predictive marketing can help improve the sales funnel. Specifically, it can help you determine the likelihood of leads to convert to customers through predictive lead scoring. Predictive lead scoring looks at your CRM data and the behavior of past won and lost deals to assign a value to a new lead. Your sales team can work more effectively and efficiently when they know which incoming leads are worth their time and which can be let go.

B2B marketers can also rely on predictive marketing to segment customers. According to Emerj, there are several ways to segment customers through predictive marketing, including demographics and behavior. Predictive models can also determine the likelihood of customers to convert or churn, as well as the likely lifetime value of a customer. Finally, predictive marketing can sort customers by recommended

 products or services. Popular examples of this sort of predictive marketing are recommended products on Amazon or shows on Netflix. This type of segmentation can help marketers upsell services to customers.

Predictive marketing can join forces with content marketing to deliver successful results for B2B marketers. Using sophisticated algorithms, predictive marketing determines what right content should be presented to customers at the right time. This highly targeted content can help educate customers and move them further along in the sales cycle.

Ultimately, predictive marketing is a trend B2B marketers can’t ignore in 2019. If you need help implementing predictive marketing strategies, contact the Borenstein Group, Top Washington DC Marketing Agency, today.

 

Public Sector Branding Fundamentals Primer

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Building or maintaining a strong brand should be an important short and long term revenue goal for your company. Especially in a recession. But for many federal contractors, the time, attention (and money) dedicated to this initiative fall short. The reasons for this are many and range for too much emphasis on set-aside status, to a desire to make marketing materials look and sound like other industry players. For example, many small government contractors want their marketing materials to sound like Lockheed Martin or Leidos, but of course, don’t have the marketing budgets of the big boys.

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”
Often beginning with a Positioning Statement, a core objective of developing a strong brand is to clearly answer the following questions:
  • What is unique about my organization or brand in the context of the industry as a whole?
  • Which of these factors are most important to my clients and prospects?
  • Which of these factors are most difficult for your competitors to imitate?
  • Which of these factors can be most easily understood by my prospects?
There are four key rules of branding. These apply to companies serving both the commercial and federal sectors:
  1. For the brand to be effective, it has to be unique.
  2. For the brand to make an impact and be memorable, it has to be clear and compelling.
  3. For the brand to generate revenue, it has to foster a sense of ownership by my clients, partners, and employees.
  4. For the brand to be credible, it must be believable.

How to Choose a Marketing Communications Agency Partner

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There are some great marketing agencies out there. Depending on where you live, you probably have a decent selection of highly-regarded firms. But just because you pick a great one doesn’t mean you’ll have a stellar experience. Before you forge ahead with an agency, here are four essential ingredients you’ll need on your end:

1. Commitment to the value of marketing. Your corporate leadership must be dedicated to the potential ROI of strategically-sharp, masterfully-implemented programs. If the commitment is not there at the highest levels, even the best agencies can’t reach their full potential.
2. Availability of senior management and key team. This ties in closely with #1. Cooperation and input, starting with the top, is essential. Willingness to share details like the sales process, close ratios and programs that have worked may be required. If the vast majority of marketing efforts and mindshare is relegated to a junior level staffer, the agency won’t have the visibility they need to win.
3. Trust. This doesn’t mean free reign, but you’ll need a degree of hands-off management to let the agency succeed. The best agencies provide a mix of solid project management and exceptionally creative. If you’ve selected one that fits the bill, give them room to achieve results.
4. A strong internal liaison. This person needs to be a hustler, understand the value of their role and yours, and have a direct line to your decision makers. They also need to be secure enough to admit when they don’t know the answer and straight shoot with both the agency and senior management.

How to Produce Effective White Papers for Public Sector Marketing (B2G)

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In Business to Government marketing, the virtues of white papers are well known. Government buyers don’t buy from direct marketing campaigns. They buy based on educational materials and logical case studies that can be used as foundational concepts to build out their procurements and programs. But alas while it sounds easy, the deployment strategy too often goes off course. Many white papers become semi-sell sheets posing as white papers. When this falls short, lack measurable results are sure to follow.
A successful B2G white paper distribution strategy really only requires five steps:
1. A marketable topic that provides important content to potential buyers.
Just because your engineers are excited about a technology doesn’t mean this topic will generate enthusiastic readers. Research your topic and make sure you’re really filling a market niche and supplying needed content. If this step is not dead on, how can the program be successful?
2. Structure and content that delivers on the promise of valuable information.
This step can do one of two things. It can build on the credibility of the company that develops the white paper. Or it can damage your company’s credibility if the reader goes to the trouble to download your data, only to find the information is poorly organized, badly written, and/or hopefully week on good content. There’s a middle ground in there too, but that falls short of motivating the prospect to do business with you.
3. Visual appeal that contributes to the positive perception the reader has of the company.
White papers are marketing pieces and should fit with the overall corporate brand. Charts, graphs, screen captures and other visual depictions should be handled by an experienced graphic designer, as should all parts of the white paper. Not everyone who can design a white paper should design a white paper. After all, you want this document to be read by your audience. Visuals are important.
4. A distribution strategy of reaching potential buyers, customers, etc.
Writing the white paper is the easy part. Really. As difficult as it can be to extract important information out of your subject matter experts and convince your C-suite and peers that you’re not giving away trade secrets at every turn, the most difficult part of any white paper strategy is distribution. Take the time and allocate the budget to do this step properly. Before you embark on developing the white papers, research white paper search and syndication services, as well as more niche-focused services.
Also, determine how you will continue to nurture those leads once they are in your pipeline.
5. Benchmarking and measurement methods to determine and define success.
Before you begin, determine what success looks like. Realistically. Is it the number of qualified downloads, qualified additions to your social media, marketing database, inbound leads, search engine optimization, synergy with a PR program, etc.?
Want to learn more? Contact The Borenstein team to learn how to make your white papers a strategic marketing asset.