First thing to do, adapt your brand, communicate differently depending on the acquisition channels used. You are not going to approach a prospect on Facebook or on LinkedIn with the same message, the same visual or even the same promise.
Depending on the acquisition channel used, you will adapt your speech, your value proposition and therefore your commercial approach.
In the B2B world, a well-defined multi-channel approach strategy will outperform any results from an omnichannel approach.
Everytime.
It’s logic. Instead of using just one channel to reach your prospects (eg cold email), why not add other channels to the mix like LinkedIn and take your B2B prospecting to the next level?
Using different digital channels as part of a unified multi-channel prospecting strategy dramatically improves overall prospecting potential.
This way, you dramatically increase the chances that your message will actually reach your prospects.
It makes sense, right?
Now imagine this.
Automate your entire B2B prospecting and include multi-channel prospecting as part of your campaigns. All while activating autopilot.
Looks like it’s too good to be true. And that’s the case. But for that it takes careful preparation and a better understanding of the whole process, yes, it is possible.
Use this article as a guide to help you create the best multi-channel approach strategy for your own business needs, from both perspectives: marketing and b2b sales.
Let’s start by breaking the whole process down into must-know units to prepare you to craft the optimal multi-channel prospecting strategy for your own business.
What is a multi-channel prospecting strategy?
What definition should be given to a multichannel prospecting strategy? It’s quite simple, as the name suggests, multichannel prospecting is the process of use different channels to reach, connect with and engage prospects.
Channels represent the different digital platforms and the means to get your message across to your potential customers. The most popular digital channels are websites (your landing pages or the content shared on your blog), emails, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), text messages and even phone calls.
People have preferences for the type of content they consume. Give your customers multiple options (through multiple channels) that they can choose from to engage with you and your brand.
Change your mindset to think about the needs of your customers first , and your business growth will follow.
Align your strategy for based on the channels you plan to use, as well as your content plan (different channels – different forms of content), and with leads that match your target audience, then test, test through the methods A/B testing.
In order to achieve your business goals, you need other companies that will use your SaaS as part of their business operations.
And there are many potential customers on the web who are in need of your product / service. Some of them are actively looking for these solutions (these are Product Aware), others are not even aware that such a solution could exist (Product Unaware).
Therefore, the main goal of a B2B multichannel prospecting strategy is to connect the dots between the needs of your business and those of your future customers. Restore that balance and create a win-win situation for everyone.
Understandably, understanding your target audience and the channels your PKI uses most is at the heart of a successful multi-channel prospecting strategy.
Which channels to use?
A multi-channel prospecting strategy builds on several key areas to improve process success and achieve better results. You need to take the time to carefully plan and implement your strategy while focusing your attention on the following:
Target audience
The multi-channel approach is customer-centric. That’s why it’s essential to know who they are and what they want, based on your ideal customer profile. You give them the choice to decide how and when to engage with your brand.
For example, older generations may prefer a direct email proposal with a cooler tone and statistical data, while younger generations understand the need and impact of building brand stories and are more inclined to to learn about a company, its mission and its values in addition to its services before making a decision. That’s why it’s important to know your customers. To do this, you can set up different growth hacking techniques to collect data on your target audiences at reduced costs. (This will be the subject of a future article)
Contents
High added value content is key, but we’re not teaching you anything here.
He is present in all aspects of digital marketing, from text and videos, to blog posts, images and white papers. That is why you have to adapt it according to the channel you are using. If you start your streak with an email, be sure to personalize it as much as possible to show the recipient that this is not a poorly targeted mass automated email.
Depending on the channel, choose the content that suits the audience. If a LinkedIn post is your next step in the sequence, don’t re-showcase your product in a cold Inmail. Personalize it, remind the recipient that you have been in contact with them before and would like to connect with them on LinkedIn to join their network.
Only then can you craft the content for your next step and stay in line with what you’ve communicated with the prospect.
Acquisition channels
Each channel is different. It has its own strengths and weaknesses, its flexibility and limitations, and of course, its costs.
Thus, each channel should be analyzed from the point of view of your own business. People have a preference in how they interact with your brand, and there is no such thing as “one-size-fits-all” content. The most important question is:
What channels does your target audience prefer to use?
These are the channels that you should prioritize in your multichannel strategy. As the saying goes, “The best marketers are where their customers are.”
It doesn’t make sense to waste valuable time and effort on a channel that isn’t regularly visited by your ideal customer profile.
Not to mention investing money in paid advertising on a channel where your audience is not present. It’s the perfect way to burn your cash with no ROI.
And the question arises: How do I find my target audience online?
Identify the right channels for your B2B multichannel prospecting strategy
As mentioned above, you have to go and meet your audiences, test wording, landing pages, value proposition, conduct surveys in order to understand the “pain points” and resolve them.
If you haven’t already, start by doing a detailed study of your audience (s). The information obtained through these studies is valuable. Remember that understanding your target audience is at the heart of a business’s success.
By knowing where your target audience is going to “consume” the content, you will be able to make a safe decision for your investment. Then you can optimize this part through paid ads where you are sure they will have the most impact.
Take a look to see what works best with your “ideal customers”.
To give you an example. When prospecting for sales, you can start your multi-channel outreach campaign with a simple personalized email to introduce yourself. If your prospect opens the email but doesn’t respond, don’t give up just yet! Follow up with an invitation to connect on LinkedIn.
Here is a list of the most used channels in a multichannel prospecting strategy. Both for sales and marketing.
Landing page & Blog
While not a direct prospecting channel, your website, landing pages, and blog are all essential elements in your multi-channel prospecting strategy. Have a website and landing pages at high conversion rate provide a focal point for your brand, your products and your services, where your potential customers will seek information.
Product pages provide an overview of the functionality of your solution the main objective of a landing page is to convert your prospect into a satisfied customer and your blog acts as a hub, filled with valuable knowledge and ideas. on how to get better results using your services.
Additionally, use your blog to present information, data, and results internal to your business and area of expertise that no other competitor can offer.
This is how you position yourself as a thought leader in your sector and how you gain credibility and confidence in your community.
Learn more about how to build a landing page that really converts.
Cold email
Email is the backbone of sales and marketing teams, and it remains the preferred channel for their prospecting strategy. The possibilities to personalize your message (using the power of hyper-personalization) and achieve a 122% ROI is unmatched by all other channels combined.
You can add images, videos, and even personalized elements to your message to differentiate your brand and offering from the competition and get an increased response rate. Emailing forms a great symbiosis with your content as the main channel for engagement. Whether it’s a cold prospecting campaign, a promotion on your product or the monthly newsletter, email is the cornerstone of any multi-channel prospecting campaign.
Use your email automation to create drop-in, multi-channel campaigns, enriched with hyper-personalization, and send unique content to the different types of persona you defined during the lead segmentation phase. Schedule them at key times when they will be best received and consumed by your audience.
Measure your progress with email by looking at open rates, click-through rates, response rates, and most importantly, optimize conversion rates. Email can directly generate conversions, and depending on the type of email campaign, this is the metric that will be used to measure the success of your email campaign.
Finally, of course, be sure to respect the rules of the GDPR.
Social networks adapted to B2B
The use of social networks in B2B has established itself as a viable and effective strategy over time. The core functionality of professional social media, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, revolves around the concepts of finding and contacting leads. They are an ideal secondary channel for your multichannel strategy. The most important being LinkedIn, we are going to focus on it a little.
According to the latest statistics from LinkedIn, there are currently close to 740 million LinkedIn members , from 200 countries and regions around the world, which you can choose from to segment your B2B target audience. These professionals use LinkedIn not only to recruit employees (or find jobs), but also to keep up to date with the latest business news in their industry. This means that they actually read regular updates from the posts of the organizations they follow, as well as those from their connections. And when a link is included in those posts, they’ll follow that link to an educational article about the benefits of your solution if it’s relevant and well-delivered.
You can believe us, since LinkedIn themselves, in their ” Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn “, claim that their platform drives more traffic to websites and blog posts than Twitter and Facebook combined.
So, when it comes to social media,
92% of B2B marketers and salespeople use LinkedIn to find and engage their B2B audience.
And that makes sense since 80% of all B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn. What’s more, the response rate to LinkedIn messages is 3x higher than that of a regular email. Apparently, people are more likely to reply to a LinkedIn message than a cold email.
To go into more detail on the best social networks to use in a B2B strategy
Telephone canvassing
Cold prospecting is an essential part of business-to-business sales. And yes, there are still prospects who appreciate a more intimate approach. Just as there are sales people who are naturally good at cold prospecting.
However, statistics show that most people are not very enthusiastic when called unexpectedly by a sales representative. In fact, they view cold calling as intrusive and obnoxious. Therefore, the success rate for cold calls is typically 1 to 3 %.
You don’t have to be a genius to understand that it can easily lead to negative emotions associated with your brand for the remaining 97% of those prospects and therefore do more harm to your business.
All things considered, you might want to give up cold calling altogether, but please be indulgent with us. We’ve promised you a B2B cold calling method that actually works, and we’re delivering it to you.
Cold calling as part of the multichannel prospecting strategy
Phone calls, when used intelligently, can be a powerful prospecting channel for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Especially after a string of emails and messages, when your sales-qualified prospects are ready to close the deal.
- Those responsible for customer relations who use three or more points of contact have 28% higher qualified lead rates than those who settle for a direct phone call.
- Sending emails to prospects between two telephone call attempts increases the chances of reaching them by 16%;
- The voice of the sales representative l can establish a confident dialogue where all questions are answered instantly. You should also reassure the prospect if he is still not sure about his purchase and present him with additional relevant information.
When it comes to wrapping up, for this type of conversation, a call is better than an email. When there is a negotiation, when they are trying to get their questions answered, further down the customer journey, this is the best time for a phone call and a demo .
However, studies show that you should send an email first, then make a call.
Again, it all comes down to one truth: You need to plan for multiple contacts, including multiple channels, before you actually connect and get a response from the prospect.
Permission-based cold calling.
Start by sending a cold email. If you don’t get a response, follow up with a second email after 2-3 days. This is how you build interest through email, and then only call people who have expressed interest with a response.
Imagine that your prospects are genuinely excited to listen to you and give you time to educate them on all the benefits of your solution. There is no doubt that they will be more inclined to listen to you since they have already expressed their interest.
The essentials: Set objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs)
Now that you know what you need to focus on for a successful multi-channel awareness campaign, here are 5 steps that will help you establish the right process and define your multi-channel awareness strategy.
The first step is to set a clear objective for your prospecting campaign. (Think SMART)
Whether you want to increase brand awareness, convert trial users to paying customers, entice existing paying users into a long-term plan or a combination of defined goals, make sure your strategy is in line with your objectives .
Right off the bat, everyone on your sales and marketing team should know and commit to a clear goal for your prospecting campaign, with clearly defined criteria for success. If you don’t have a clearly defined plan for the end goal and how you are going to achieve it, what exactly are you looking for?
What are the main business outcomes targeted by your marketing and sales specialists?
Only after you have taken this step can you begin to design a measurable and clear multi-channel strategy.
In other words: find out where your money is best spent, and then try to minimize wasted budget.
Here are some key goals to guide your multichannel marketing strategy:
- Sensitization : Your goal is to publicize your solution by achieving your KPI;
- Consideration : Evaluate if your product / service meets the needs of your prospect better than your competitors or other alternatives.
- Conversion / Sales : It’s commercial success.
- Retention : Establish customer success and retain your valued customers.
A well-designed multi-channel strategy can help you achieve either of these goals. But it’s important to establish what is your priority to know which channels to choose and measure success.
Measure the overall performance of the company
Don’t go wrong looking only at direct sales, instead measure the performance of the business as a whole. It’s important to understand that success can also be measured in leads. The next step is to determine the most appropriate KPIs to measure the success of your prospecting strategy. Of course, this includes the different channels that make up this strategy.
When you understand the measure and purpose of a channel , you can use different metrics to further assess success. For example :
- CPA (cost per action) and CPL (cost per lead) for conversion channels (Landing Pages, Email + Cold Calling + LinkedIn);
- Consideration via customer acquisition channels (Social networks and Ads);
- New users compared to those who return and increase in sales or conversions for customer loyalty channels.
B2B KPIs to measure the performance of your multi-channel approach strategy
A B2B KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a measurable value specific to B2B companies that helps you measure the effectiveness of your strategy in achieving its business goals.
Here are some examples of B2B key performance indicators:
– Sales by contact method : Each company is unique, and this is precisely where its strength lies. Test which contact method works best for your sales team. Additionally, you may find that some sales reps are more comfortable closing sales by sending cold emails, while others are more successful over the phone. Test and measure the results, then combine their strengths to multiply the points of contact with your prospects.
– Landing page conversion rate : If the percentage of landing page visitors who convert is 1 %, you know you have a conversion problem.
– Email click rate : How many of these cold emails really serve their purpose? (Open rate, conversion rate …)
– Source of leads : Which channel do your prospects come from most often to your website?
– Customer acquisition cost (CAC): An excellent measure to optimize the right channel and the “time spent” on acquiring customers. Which channel brought you the most customers for the least amount of time spent?
– Monthly recurring income (MRR) : For SaaS companies and subscription companies, this is the flagship indicator to follow. Recurring monthly income is what makes the business sustainable, and therefore what every B2B marketer strives to improve.
– Customer Lifetime Value : What is the value of a professional client for your business? It is by answering this question that you can decide how much you are willing to spend to acquire.
Automate the process
A prospecting campaign involving a number of channels is a complex process that cannot be done manually without investing a lot of time and effort. You have to automate the process as much as possible using sales and marketing support services. You will need services that allow you to store your customer data (A CRM), have a multi-channel approach functionality and track your results with the possibility of adjusting the whole process when and where it is is necessary.
Most products use a combination of services, but rarely a complete all-in-one solution.
This is why at Twilead , we wanted to set up the ultimate software, the one capable of managing a whole range of your marketing, prospecting or customer relationship operations. A real turnkey tool, Twilead allows you to reach your audience, organize customer demo meetings, process your database within a CRM and more all from a single software.
To learn more about our solution, click here to book a demo of the tool.
Engage in dialogue with customers within a reasonable timeframe
Organize your campaign in such a way that you don’t spam or overwhelm people. If you start your campaign with a cold email and you plan a relaunch, try to leave them some space between your next actions (slow down, don’t send an approach message every day!). You can send a LinkedIn invite after your first email, so that person understands that you’re not just sending them en masse, but paying attention to their journey. But now might not be the time to send her a LinkedIn message right after she ignores your follow-up email.
Think about a reasonable set of communications and engagement stages with customers, so they don’t feel bombarded with your messages.
Use the multichannel option wisely to get the best possible results for your campaign.
Make the customer journey consistent
When building a multi-channel strategy, it’s important that target customers have the same experience regardless of their preferred engagement channel. Make sure the messaging and customer experience are consistent to preserve your brand image. If you devote too much resources and attention to one channel and other parts of your multichannel campaign have a worse experience, it can negatively impact your bottom line.
Analyze your results and improve them
It is important to always analyze your results. A deep analysis will show you which channels are performing the best and whether the channels are influencing each other. You can also see where you will need to make changes to get better results. You can even delete one channel in favor of another if it is not satisfactory despite the changes made.
Conclusion
Implementing a multi-channel prospecting strategy is becoming a standard in B2B. The numbers show that prospects and customers tend to respond more favorably to companies that use these methods. We hope that this short explanatory guide will help you to implement this type of strategy within your company.
These items may interest you:
First thing to do, adapt your brand, communicate differently depending on the acquisition channels used. You are not going to approach a prospect on Facebook or on LinkedIn with the same message, the same visual or even the same promise.
Depending on the acquisition channel used, you will adapt your speech, your value proposition and therefore your commercial approach.
In the B2B world, a well-defined multi-channel approach strategy will outperform any results from an omnichannel approach.
Everytime.
It’s logic. Instead of using just one channel to reach your prospects (eg cold email), why not add other channels to the mix like LinkedIn and take your B2B prospecting to the next level?
Using different digital channels as part of a unified multi-channel prospecting strategy dramatically improves overall prospecting potential.
This way, you dramatically increase the chances that your message will actually reach your prospects.
It makes sense, right?
Now imagine this.
Automate your entire B2B prospecting and include multi-channel prospecting as part of your campaigns. All while activating autopilot.
Looks like it’s too good to be true. And that’s the case. But for that it takes careful preparation and a better understanding of the whole process, yes, it is possible.
Use this article as a guide to help you create the best multi-channel approach strategy for your own business needs, from both perspectives: marketing and b2b sales.
Let’s start by breaking the whole process down into must-know units to prepare you to craft the optimal multi-channel prospecting strategy for your own business.
What is a multi-channel prospecting strategy?
What definition should be given to a multichannel prospecting strategy? It’s quite simple, as the name suggests, multichannel prospecting is the process of use different channels to reach, connect with and engage prospects.
Channels represent the different digital platforms and the means to get your message across to your potential customers. The most popular digital channels are websites (your landing pages or the content shared on your blog), emails, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), text messages and even phone calls.
People have preferences for the type of content they consume. Give your customers multiple options (through multiple channels) that they can choose from to engage with you and your brand.
Change your mindset to think about the needs of your customers first , and your business growth will follow.
Align your strategy for based on the channels you plan to use, as well as your content plan (different channels – different forms of content), and with leads that match your target audience, then test, test through the methods A/B testing.
In order to achieve your business goals, you need other companies that will use your SaaS as part of their business operations.
And there are many potential customers on the web who are in need of your product / service. Some of them are actively looking for these solutions (these are Product Aware), others are not even aware that such a solution could exist (Product Unaware).
Therefore, the main goal of a B2B multichannel prospecting strategy is to connect the dots between the needs of your business and those of your future customers. Restore that balance and create a win-win situation for everyone.
Understandably, understanding your target audience and the channels your PKI uses most is at the heart of a successful multi-channel prospecting strategy.
Which channels to use?
A multi-channel prospecting strategy builds on several key areas to improve process success and achieve better results. You need to take the time to carefully plan and implement your strategy while focusing your attention on the following:
Target audience
The multi-channel approach is customer-centric. That’s why it’s essential to know who they are and what they want, based on your ideal customer profile. You give them the choice to decide how and when to engage with your brand.
For example, older generations may prefer a direct email proposal with a cooler tone and statistical data, while younger generations understand the need and impact of building brand stories and are more inclined to to learn about a company, its mission and its values in addition to its services before making a decision. That’s why it’s important to know your customers. To do this, you can set up different growth hacking techniques to collect data on your target audiences at reduced costs. (This will be the subject of a future article)
Contents
High added value content is key, but we’re not teaching you anything here.
He is present in all aspects of digital marketing, from text and videos, to blog posts, images and white papers. That is why you have to adapt it according to the channel you are using. If you start your streak with an email, be sure to personalize it as much as possible to show the recipient that this is not a poorly targeted mass automated email.
Depending on the channel, choose the content that suits the audience. If a LinkedIn post is your next step in the sequence, don’t re-showcase your product in a cold Inmail. Personalize it, remind the recipient that you have been in contact with them before and would like to connect with them on LinkedIn to join their network.
Only then can you craft the content for your next step and stay in line with what you’ve communicated with the prospect.
Acquisition channels
Each channel is different. It has its own strengths and weaknesses, its flexibility and limitations, and of course, its costs.
Thus, each channel should be analyzed from the point of view of your own business. People have a preference in how they interact with your brand, and there is no such thing as “one-size-fits-all” content. The most important question is:
What channels does your target audience prefer to use?
These are the channels that you should prioritize in your multichannel strategy. As the saying goes, “The best marketers are where their customers are.”
It doesn’t make sense to waste valuable time and effort on a channel that isn’t regularly visited by your ideal customer profile.
Not to mention investing money in paid advertising on a channel where your audience is not present. It’s the perfect way to burn your cash with no ROI.
And the question arises: How do I find my target audience online?
Identify the right channels for your B2B multichannel prospecting strategy
As mentioned above, you have to go and meet your audiences, test wording, landing pages, value proposition, conduct surveys in order to understand the “pain points” and resolve them.
If you haven’t already, start by doing a detailed study of your audience (s). The information obtained through these studies is valuable. Remember that understanding your target audience is at the heart of a business’s success.
By knowing where your target audience is going to “consume” the content, you will be able to make a safe decision for your investment. Then you can optimize this part through paid ads where you are sure they will have the most impact.
Take a look to see what works best with your “ideal customers”.
To give you an example. When prospecting for sales, you can start your multi-channel outreach campaign with a simple personalized email to introduce yourself. If your prospect opens the email but doesn’t respond, don’t give up just yet! Follow up with an invitation to connect on LinkedIn.
Here is a list of the most used channels in a multichannel prospecting strategy. Both for sales and marketing.
Landing page & Blog
While not a direct prospecting channel, your website, landing pages, and blog are all essential elements in your multi-channel prospecting strategy. Have a website and landing pages at high conversion rate provide a focal point for your brand, your products and your services, where your potential customers will seek information.
Product pages provide an overview of the functionality of your solution the main objective of a landing page is to convert your prospect into a satisfied customer and your blog acts as a hub, filled with valuable knowledge and ideas. on how to get better results using your services.
Additionally, use your blog to present information, data, and results internal to your business and area of expertise that no other competitor can offer.
This is how you position yourself as a thought leader in your sector and how you gain credibility and confidence in your community.
Learn more about how to build a landing page that really converts.
Cold email
Email is the backbone of sales and marketing teams, and it remains the preferred channel for their prospecting strategy. The possibilities to personalize your message (using the power of hyper-personalization) and achieve a 122% ROI is unmatched by all other channels combined.
You can add images, videos, and even personalized elements to your message to differentiate your brand and offering from the competition and get an increased response rate. Emailing forms a great symbiosis with your content as the main channel for engagement. Whether it’s a cold prospecting campaign, a promotion on your product or the monthly newsletter, email is the cornerstone of any multi-channel prospecting campaign.
Use your email automation to create drop-in, multi-channel campaigns, enriched with hyper-personalization, and send unique content to the different types of persona you defined during the lead segmentation phase. Schedule them at key times when they will be best received and consumed by your audience.
Measure your progress with email by looking at open rates, click-through rates, response rates, and most importantly, optimize conversion rates. Email can directly generate conversions, and depending on the type of email campaign, this is the metric that will be used to measure the success of your email campaign.
Finally, of course, be sure to respect the rules of the GDPR.
Social networks adapted to B2B
The use of social networks in B2B has established itself as a viable and effective strategy over time. The core functionality of professional social media, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, revolves around the concepts of finding and contacting leads. They are an ideal secondary channel for your multichannel strategy. The most important being LinkedIn, we are going to focus on it a little.
According to the latest statistics from LinkedIn, there are currently close to 740 million LinkedIn members , from 200 countries and regions around the world, which you can choose from to segment your B2B target audience. These professionals use LinkedIn not only to recruit employees (or find jobs), but also to keep up to date with the latest business news in their industry. This means that they actually read regular updates from the posts of the organizations they follow, as well as those from their connections. And when a link is included in those posts, they’ll follow that link to an educational article about the benefits of your solution if it’s relevant and well-delivered.
You can believe us, since LinkedIn themselves, in their ” Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn “, claim that their platform drives more traffic to websites and blog posts than Twitter and Facebook combined.
So, when it comes to social media,
92% of B2B marketers and salespeople use LinkedIn to find and engage their B2B audience.
And that makes sense since 80% of all B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn. What’s more, the response rate to LinkedIn messages is 3x higher than that of a regular email. Apparently, people are more likely to reply to a LinkedIn message than a cold email.
To go into more detail on the best social networks to use in a B2B strategy
Telephone canvassing
Cold prospecting is an essential part of business-to-business sales. And yes, there are still prospects who appreciate a more intimate approach. Just as there are sales people who are naturally good at cold prospecting.
However, statistics show that most people are not very enthusiastic when called unexpectedly by a sales representative. In fact, they view cold calling as intrusive and obnoxious. Therefore, the success rate for cold calls is typically 1 to 3 %.
You don’t have to be a genius to understand that it can easily lead to negative emotions associated with your brand for the remaining 97% of those prospects and therefore do more harm to your business.
All things considered, you might want to give up cold calling altogether, but please be indulgent with us. We’ve promised you a B2B cold calling method that actually works, and we’re delivering it to you.
Cold calling as part of the multichannel prospecting strategy
Phone calls, when used intelligently, can be a powerful prospecting channel for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Especially after a string of emails and messages, when your sales-qualified prospects are ready to close the deal.
- Those responsible for customer relations who use three or more points of contact have 28% higher qualified lead rates than those who settle for a direct phone call.
- Sending emails to prospects between two telephone call attempts increases the chances of reaching them by 16%;
- The voice of the sales representative l can establish a confident dialogue where all questions are answered instantly. You should also reassure the prospect if he is still not sure about his purchase and present him with additional relevant information.
When it comes to wrapping up, for this type of conversation, a call is better than an email. When there is a negotiation, when they are trying to get their questions answered, further down the customer journey, this is the best time for a phone call and a demo .
However, studies show that you should send an email first, then make a call.
Again, it all comes down to one truth: You need to plan for multiple contacts, including multiple channels, before you actually connect and get a response from the prospect.
Permission-based cold calling.
Start by sending a cold email. If you don’t get a response, follow up with a second email after 2-3 days. This is how you build interest through email, and then only call people who have expressed interest with a response.
Imagine that your prospects are genuinely excited to listen to you and give you time to educate them on all the benefits of your solution. There is no doubt that they will be more inclined to listen to you since they have already expressed their interest.
The essentials: Set objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs)
Now that you know what you need to focus on for a successful multi-channel awareness campaign, here are 5 steps that will help you establish the right process and define your multi-channel awareness strategy.
The first step is to set a clear objective for your prospecting campaign. (Think SMART)
Whether you want to increase brand awareness, convert trial users to paying customers, entice existing paying users into a long-term plan or a combination of defined goals, make sure your strategy is in line with your objectives .
Right off the bat, everyone on your sales and marketing team should know and commit to a clear goal for your prospecting campaign, with clearly defined criteria for success. If you don’t have a clearly defined plan for the end goal and how you are going to achieve it, what exactly are you looking for?
What are the main business outcomes targeted by your marketing and sales specialists?
Only after you have taken this step can you begin to design a measurable and clear multi-channel strategy.
In other words: find out where your money is best spent, and then try to minimize wasted budget.
Here are some key goals to guide your multichannel marketing strategy:
- Sensitization : Your goal is to publicize your solution by achieving your KPI;
- Consideration : Evaluate if your product / service meets the needs of your prospect better than your competitors or other alternatives.
- Conversion / Sales : It’s commercial success.
- Retention : Establish customer success and retain your valued customers.
A well-designed multi-channel strategy can help you achieve either of these goals. But it’s important to establish what is your priority to know which channels to choose and measure success.
Measure the overall performance of the company
Don’t go wrong looking only at direct sales, instead measure the performance of the business as a whole. It’s important to understand that success can also be measured in leads. The next step is to determine the most appropriate KPIs to measure the success of your prospecting strategy. Of course, this includes the different channels that make up this strategy.
When you understand the measure and purpose of a channel , you can use different metrics to further assess success. For example :
- CPA (cost per action) and CPL (cost per lead) for conversion channels (Landing Pages, Email + Cold Calling + LinkedIn);
- Consideration via customer acquisition channels (Social networks and Ads);
- New users compared to those who return and increase in sales or conversions for customer loyalty channels.
B2B KPIs to measure the performance of your multi-channel approach strategy
A B2B KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a measurable value specific to B2B companies that helps you measure the effectiveness of your strategy in achieving its business goals.
Here are some examples of B2B key performance indicators:
– Sales by contact method : Each company is unique, and this is precisely where its strength lies. Test which contact method works best for your sales team. Additionally, you may find that some sales reps are more comfortable closing sales by sending cold emails, while others are more successful over the phone. Test and measure the results, then combine their strengths to multiply the points of contact with your prospects.
– Landing page conversion rate : If the percentage of landing page visitors who convert is 1 %, you know you have a conversion problem.
– Email click rate : How many of these cold emails really serve their purpose? (Open rate, conversion rate …)
– Source of leads : Which channel do your prospects come from most often to your website?
– Customer acquisition cost (CAC): An excellent measure to optimize the right channel and the “time spent” on acquiring customers. Which channel brought you the most customers for the least amount of time spent?
– Monthly recurring income (MRR) : For SaaS companies and subscription companies, this is the flagship indicator to follow. Recurring monthly income is what makes the business sustainable, and therefore what every B2B marketer strives to improve.
– Customer Lifetime Value : What is the value of a professional client for your business? It is by answering this question that you can decide how much you are willing to spend to acquire.
Automate the process
A prospecting campaign involving a number of channels is a complex process that cannot be done manually without investing a lot of time and effort. You have to automate the process as much as possible using sales and marketing support services. You will need services that allow you to store your customer data (A CRM), have a multi-channel approach functionality and track your results with the possibility of adjusting the whole process when and where it is is necessary.
Most products use a combination of services, but rarely a complete all-in-one solution.
This is why at Twilead, we wanted to set up the ultimate software, the one capable of managing a whole range of your marketing, prospecting or customer relationship operations. A real turnkey tool, Twilead allows you to reach your audience, organize customer demo meetings, process your database within a CRM and more all from a single software.
To learn more about our solution, click here to book a demo of the tool.
Engage in dialogue with customers within a reasonable timeframe
Organize your campaign in such a way that you don’t spam or overwhelm people. If you start your campaign with a cold email and you plan a relaunch, try to leave them some space between your next actions (slow down, don’t send an approach message every day!). You can send a LinkedIn invite after your first email, so that person understands that you’re not just sending them en masse, but paying attention to their journey. But now might not be the time to send her a LinkedIn message right after she ignores your follow-up email.
Think about a reasonable set of communications and engagement stages with customers, so they don’t feel bombarded with your messages.
Use the multichannel option wisely to get the best possible results for your campaign.
Make the customer journey consistent
When building a multi-channel strategy, it’s important that target customers have the same experience regardless of their preferred engagement channel. Make sure the messaging and customer experience are consistent to preserve your brand image. If you devote too much resources and attention to one channel and other parts of your multichannel campaign have a worse experience, it can negatively impact your bottom line.
Analyze your results and improve them
It is important to always analyze your results. A deep analysis will show you which channels are performing the best and whether the channels are influencing each other. You can also see where you will need to make changes to get better results. You can even delete one channel in favor of another if it is not satisfactory despite the changes made.
Conclusion
Implementing a multi-channel prospecting strategy is becoming a standard in B2B. The numbers show that prospects and customers tend to respond more favorably to companies that use these methods. We hope that this short explanatory guide will help you to implement this type of strategy within your company.
