Change Your Narrative to Drive Better Lead Generation
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Tl;dr - Get to know your audience / personas, then change your narrative to connect with people, not companies.
Most B2B businesses approach marketing from a “we have a service/product to offer you, you should buy into us because of xyz…” perspective. I would go so far as to say that that 90% of the time they’ll be marketing directly to other companies and not the people within the companies. So, why is it that when it comes to building a lead generation program, businesses find it so difficult to achieve great results?
To me, the answer is quite simple really; they’re marketing to the wrong audience in the wrong way.
Your prospects are people, not companies
This is by far the biggest impediment we see when trying to build a successful lead generation program, or do marketing in general. Most businesses, especially B2B companies, are treating their [un]known prospects as entities, not people. The fact of the matter is this, when you’re a business and you are engaging in digital marketing, or any marketing for that matter, you’re not marketing to other businesses - you’re marketing to people within other businesses.
Let’s make a point using a statistic here (since everyone loves numbers):
On average, 70% of your sales funnel happens before you even have a prospective buyer. (SiriusDecisions)
Okay, let’s hold up for a second here; up to 70% of your sales funnel is over before you even get a chance to meet your prospect. That seems pretty crazy; but, if you take into account your current quantity and quality of leads, does it really seem that crazy? Think about your sales team; how much do they have to scrape to win and close prospects? What reasoning is given for why prospects aren’t closing?
A lot of organizations will look at lower sales numbers and start pointing fingers saying that the sales team isn’t doing their job or isn’t working hard enough, but is that really the truth?
Perhaps it is, but I would go out on a limb to say that the blame should mostly be directed back to the organization, that there wasn’t enough resource given to help the sales team actually do their job well or efficiently. That the sales team was essentially climbing Everest while it was covered in 10 feet of slippery ice. I’ve seen this before; it isn’t pretty.
So, if up to 70% of prospects have already made key decisions in your sales process by the time they contact you, how do you make sure those decisions are more in your favor than not?
Change your perspective on who you’re marketing to
Changing the narrative is not always an easy thing to do. I’ll admit up front, depending on who your company is, who’s in charge, and the industry you’re in, this can be an extremely difficult thing to do. How a company messages itself is often ingrained in years of direction given by old-school marketers, executive leadership, and even stockholders and ownership. But the fact is, to better prime your prospects before you even know about them, you need to find a way to connect with them on a deeper level, sooner in the process.
As a content marketing agency, we often come up with lead generation ideas that help our clients change the narrative. We do this by first identifying who we’re actually talking to. Not just industries and demographics, but the actual people we’re trying to connect with. The process of identifying whom we’re talking to is called persona development.
Personas allow us to visualize, empathize and connect with single types of people within a target audience. They allow us to look past the target industry, job positions / titles, and traditional demographics. They allow us to understand who they are on a personal level, and how they individually make decisions, the latter of which we define as buyer journeys.
While there are always edge cases and paths we can’t structurally account for, the buyer journey is a visual roadmap we create to understand the typical journey our personas take—from initial exploration to research, consideration to close. It allows us to identify key points in the various stages of decision making, and then create strategies and implement tactical elements to help the persona at each stage.
Change your marketing narrative to connect with your prospects
Once you’ve taken the time to truly get to know who you’re marketing to (your personas) and understand their buying journey and decision making processes, you should be able to finally come to terms with how to change your marketing narrative to better connect with that 70% who have already decided what, when, how and why.
Remember that marketing / sales approach I mentioned earlier? The, “we have a service/product to offer you, you should buy into us because of xyz…” approach that many B2B business marketing departments adopt?
What if we could market to our unknown prospects earlier in the buying journey, by focusing on their needs instead of our own? Instead of saying, “you should buy from us, and here’s why…”, why not say, “we know you have these challenges, and here’s information that will help you overcome them”.
That change in your narrative—making it about them and their needs vs. your own—helps disarm them, lowers their defenses, and positions you as a friendly resource for them, as compared to a company who’s desperately trying to get a sale (or, if you want to be more frank about it, get their money.)
On average, over 75% of leads are not ready to be sold (Gleanster Research.)
By changing your narrative to help these people before they are ready to buy from you, you will effectively increase your potential to be on their short list, as well as their qualification as a lead, when they are ready to buy.
For now, I’m really hoping to help everyone adjust their mindset for “why” it’s important to change the narrative, not so much “how” in terms of exact examples. Because of this, I’ll cover examples about what a change in narrative can look like in future posts. Generally, the change in narrative will include website content, how you manage emails, and how you support people socially (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
Do you have questions, thoughts, or comments you’d like to add? I’d love to hear them! Please leave them in the comments below. If you’re a B2B company and are looking for a digital partner who can help you change your narrative, we encourage you to reach out and start a conversation.
