Tag: Marketing Strategy

Is Video Marketing Relevant in B2B Marketing for Professional Services?

Contributed by Sonny Sultani

B2B professional services create customized offerings for buyers and develop relationships with each business based on trust. While there are several ways to build this relationship, video marketing is quickly becoming one of the top strategies for marketers.

However, is video marketing relevant in B2B marketing, or is it a passing trend among consumers?

Explore the potential of B2B video marketing for professional services and five ways for using video in B2B marketing.

What Is a B2B Marketing Video?

A B2B marketing video promotes your business, introduces your services, and builds trust with your audience. You can share your marketing video on your website, social media, or a third-party website where users can view it. Then, they can use links within the video or in the description to return to your website and sign up for your services.

“A B2B marketing video promotes your business, introduces your services, and builds trust with your audience.”

Is Video Marketing Necessary?

The demand for video content is growing as more buyers prefer the immersive experience that the media format offers rather than traditional channels for interacting with brands. Today, 86% of marketers use video as part of their strategy and plan to continue using it because of its high ROI.

To remain competitive in today’s market, you must incorporate video into your strategy.

Is YouTube Good for B2B Marketing?

The second most visited website is YouTube, the online video hosting giant. It provides the tools and audience you need to launch your next video marketing campaign.

Before you start investing in YouTube, here are a few B2B video marketing statistics you should know about the platform:

  • 30 million users log onto YouTube daily, and two billion monthly
  • Users watch over one billion hours of YouTube content daily
  • There are over 38 million channels on YouTube
  • 90% of digital consumers also use YouTube

Among that large audience are your B2B buyers, looking for relevant content in their industry. You can position yourself as a leader by providing that content through the most popular video site.

Why Is Video Important in B2B Marketing?

Here are four benefits to including video as part of your B2B marketing efforts:

Increases Lead Engagement

Videos are one of the best content formats for encouraging engagement.

For example, videos on Facebook have the highest engagement rate, videos on Instagram receive twice the engagement of regular photo posts, and tweets with videos see ten times the engagement as those without.

Engagement shows your viewers are interested in your message and trust your brand. It also lets you know whether most of your viewers are having a positive experience.

The ideal video length for engagement is within two minutes. After that, many viewers tend to leave. However, if viewers stay at least six minutes, they will most likely remain for the full video.

Addresses Different Learning Methods

Not everyone learns the same way. Roughly 65% of the population are visual learners. Visual learners retain information by viewing images, videos, and charts.

“Roughly 65% of the population are visual learners.”

You are missing a large demographic if all your touchpoints are only text emails, blog posts, or phone calls. Bloggers publish over 6 million new posts daily, and the average office worker receives over 121 emails daily. You want your content to be memorable despite the oversaturation of digital media, which requires a mix of strategies and an incorporation of media.

Adding a visual touchpoint through a B2B marketing video ensures that most of your audience will retain the information and remember your professional services brand.

Improves Your Search Ranking

On average, 68% of online experiences start with a search engine. So before your buyers ever find your brand, they will be on a search engine like Google looking for solutions or learning information in their industry.

The more content you create, the greater your chance of ranking in those searches. In addition, over half of website traffic comes from organic searches, which means search engine optimization should be a high priority in your B2B marketing efforts to drive new traffic to your site.

Video in your blog posts and web pages improves your site’s ranking in search engines. It also ensures the traffic you attract stays on those pages longer as it keeps them engaged.

In addition to supporting other content, video also ranks in a search engine by itself. YouTube videos appear in search queries based on the keywords you use in your closed captions, description, and title, as well as the video’s engagement rate.

Works Well with Social Media

Since 59% of the world’s population is on social media, spending an average of two and a half hours each day browsing content, it should be a core part of your marketing strategy. However, reaching your target audience isn’t always easy as there are millions of users and competing content.

Video content helps cut through the noise by adding an engaging touchpoint to your social media channels. To ensure your video appears in front of the right audience, you can sponsor the content and use filters such as profession and location to target your B2B buyers.

The top social media marketing platform is LinkedIn. There are over 630 million professionals on this social channel. In addition, 80% of them are decision-makers in their businesses. If you are looking for the best channel to share your B2B video content, consider adding LinkedIn to the top of your list.

Builds Trust with B2B Buyers

Trust and authority are the cornerstones of a buyer relationship. They need to trust your brand and recommendations and see you as a leader in your industry before they are willing to invest in your services.

“Trust and authority are the cornerstones of a buyer relationship.”

Video helps build that trust by developing a relationship through personal interactions on video. It gives you a fresh way to interact with your buyers and deliver messages. In addition, because they can see a face and someone’s eyes as they speak, it also improves the experience of receiving information.

Studies revealed the power of eye contact in communication. Some of the benefits of showing your eyes when communicating include:

  • Sharing emotions without speaking
  • Appearing more honest
  • Increasing your persuasive power
  • Improving understanding
  • Building respect

How To Use Video in B2B Professional Service Marketing

Use these five strategies for incorporating video into your B2B professional service marketing:

Types of Video Content

1. Thought Leadership Content

Roughly half of decision makers spend over an hour interacting with thought leadership content each week. Thought leadership is content where experts speak on a topic in their niche for the education and inspiration of others.

When you create thought leadership content, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. Your clients will see your content and learn to respect your opinion.

You can publish short-form thought leadership on YouTube or as short business-to-business marketing videos on your website. These are snippets of ideas and inspiration you share through video. They work well as complements to other content.

However, some of the most effective B2B video thought leadership are webinars. About 91% of marketers who use webinars say they saw great success with the format. Webinars allow you to dive deeper into a subject as most attendees prefer them to last around 45 minutes. In addition, they can be live events or on-demand, allowing you to share the webinar on YouTube and your website even after the event ends.

2. Monthly Video Blogs

About 94% of people will watch a video to help them understand a business and its services. Instead of only publishing regularly written blogs, you can add video content to your monthly or weekly schedule.

Regularly published video blogs can cover a wide array of subjects, just as you would on your website’s blog. For example, you can explain how your services work or talk about why businesses need services like yours, which creates demand.

Your monthly video blogs might also include training to help current customers continue benefiting from your services and maximize their returns. For example, if you offer content creation services, you can post videos on effective lead nurturing and follow-up strategies. These will help your customers convert the leads your content brought in.

3. Client Testimonials

Your buyers will conduct online research before choosing what services they will buy. About 92% of buyers will read reviews as part of that research. In addition, 95% of people say that reviews influence their decision.

Example of Client Testimonial

Sharing reviews on your website can build trust with future buyers as it shows you are a reliable company. Reviews also sometimes share specific ways others can benefit from your services.

However, you can add another layer of authenticity to your reviews by creating video client testimonials. As with your video content, testimonials are more trustworthy when the audience can see the speaker. They have more faith that the previous client is providing an authentic review and that the experience was positive because they can see the client’s body language and eyes while they share their experience.

Case studies are one of the most effective B2B content types. They are testimonials about past customers and how your brand helped that client succeed. In addition, it can serve as a roadmap for future clients looking for the same results and build trust with buyers since it provides specific ways your services benefit businesses.

4. Company Introductions

When you meet clients in person, your first act is reaching out your hand, making eye contact, and introducing yourself.

However, when a client’s first interaction with your brand is your website, you don’t have a chance to offer that hand of trust. Instead, you rely on your website to give a positive first impression. One way to make your visitor’s acquaintance is through an introduction video.

An introduction video appears on your about page or landing pages as a greeting to new customers. It gives them a friendly face to see while introducing them to who you are and what services you offer.

The ideal introduction video should be between two and three minutes long. Keep it professional yet remain human throughout. In the end, provide a clear call to action. These might be directions for contacting you or a specific service they could sign up for.

5. Talent Acquisitions

The expert team supporting your business is a crucial part of your outstanding services. However, finding that talent is getting more difficult in today’s labor shortage. There are 3.4 million fewer Americans working today than there were in 2020.

Because of the competitive market, you want your business to stand out to attract the best in your industry.

Video promotions for your business give job seekers an inside look at who you are as a company, what you stand for, and what your company culture is. It helps potential employees know whether they are a good fit and can attract new employees because the engaging format stands out in stark contrast to the thousands of plain text job listings.

Add Video to Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

The upward trends in video marketing show that B2B video isn’t going away anytime soon. Therefore, those in B2B professional services marketing should adopt video into their strategy to remain competitive and stand out in today’s immersive multimedia society.

Contact us to learn about our video content solutions for B2B professional services.

What is a Nascar Slide? 5 Ways to Boost Brand Performance

Contributed by Sonny Sultani

So, What’s a Nascar Slide?

Essentially, a Nascar slide is the part of the sales deck or webpage that showcases all the companies that have worked with you. These are typically displayed as a series of logos, much like a Nascar vehicle is embellished with sponsorship logos. It’s part brand pride and part trust with current opportunities during the buying process. More importantly, there is a right way to demonstrate which brand you are working with and the wrong way. This blog is designed to help you navigate building out your own Nascar Slide and which companies should be featured during your sales process and on your website.

When deciding which companies make the cut, ask yourself – Who visits my website? Surely, its qualified leads, 100% of the time right? Realistically, you will get current clients, family & friends, referrals, leads and let’s not forget to mention competitors perusing your site. For that reason, we need to take care of the types of clients you present to the world.

There is always the argument that if you’re doing a great job for your clients you should not have to worry about them leaving for your competitors – even though as marketers, we like to think conservatively with the information we give to competition. By mitigating risk, we think protecting your company from losing key accounts is ideal – Yup, we have a little competitor paranoia in us.

What are some key features to think about when building your Nascar Slide? Below, read some helpful rules that should go into consideration before sharing your Nascar slides with the public:

Customize for the client you want to serve

Start by segmenting your clients. Some of the ways we do this is by separating clients based on Industry type, employee size, or revenue size. Present clients that are similar to prospects you’re presenting to. For example, if you are presenting to a small plumber in Phoenix, showcase plumbers you’re currently working with across the country that are the same size in your Nascar Slide. This will build trust and assure the client you understand their niche industry and size.

Need Help Building Out Your Nascar Slide?

Chat With a Strategist

Present the information, but don’t share it permanently

Present your clients to potentials in a way that your competitors can’t get a hand on it. Use Zoom or Google Meets to present your sales deck, but don’t share your client list to your opportunity to hold onto, as that may eventually find its way to someone who shouldn’t have it.

Forming relationships with prospects is an exercise in trust – ideally, you want to establish a mutually beneficial partnership that accounts for potential leakages. This will obviously be different on the layout of a web page – keep your most loyal accounts here for immediate reference.

Look to show off size in the public places

Clients like Microsoft or Oracle are great to have on your slide because they have several thousand employees and it becomes hard to pinpoint who at the organization is the buyer that is working with your company. Also, it may show the enterprise work you’re looking for.

However, this can work against you if your pitching to a small business and telling them you work with giant companies. Use giants on the website and other places that are more public but ensure it’s a good fit for your organization. If you serve smaller companies and are showing off much larger ones you might send the wrong message to the clients you are trying to attract.  

Share for Quality, Not Quantity

It’s nice to showcase how you work with thousands of clients –there are clear advantages for doing this for several types of industries like SaaS. However, we prefer to see a more intimate group of high authority companies. For example, if you are serving hospitality, it may be enough to say you work with Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt, rather than listing off hundreds of smaller clients with less brand recognition.

Positive Referrals Only

Lastly, only put clients on your site that will advocate for your company. Expect that in some cases, prospects might ask for referrals, or they may know several people at a company you say you’re working with and they may reach out to find out how the relationship is working out. There’s no faster way to lose confidence in a brand than by reaching out to someone who claims to have given a positive referral, only to find that they think otherwise.

We are a firm believer that in B2B ,prospects want to work with companies they trust and know. Your Nascar slide will help them build the trust in your organization by showing that you have the experience in working with other clients.

What are some simple ways that your company can begin implementing Nascar slides immediately? 120/80 can help. We are a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in a broad range of solutions that have proven to drive leads and conversions in B2B. For proof of our success, look no further than our Nascar slides!

Why Marketers Should Understand B2B SaaS Churn Rates

Contributed by Sonny Sultani

Software as a Service (SaaS) companies provide an invaluable offering. Clients can access beneficial internet applications without the complexity and bandwidth limitations of having to download and manage expensive software. It’s becoming such a popular tool that SaaS applications make up over 70% of total company software use. Of course, the only way for these businesses to thrive is to ensure that acquisition numbers exceed B2B SaaS churn rates.

Every subscription-based company must be aware of B2B SaaS churn rates to secure their overall success and longevity. Keeping an eye on how many people terminate their subscriptions gives marketers important insight into current performance and revenue growth forecasting. SaaS churn rates tell a powerful story about what aspect of the customer experience is failing and what changes you need to make to attract new prospects and retain current customers. As a result, it’s an effective tool for enhancing your digital marketing efforts.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of B2B SaaS churn rates, how to calculate them, and how they impact acquisition and market positioning for continued success.

“SaaS churn rates tell a powerful story about what aspect of the customer experience is failing and what changes you need to make to attract new prospects and retain current customers.”

What Exactly is SaaS Churn Rate?

SaaS churn rate (also known as attrition) is the rate at which customers cancel their subscriptions during a certain amount of time. While an occasional loss may not seem impactful in the big picture of your business plan, if left unchecked, B2B SaaS churn rates can ultimately destroy your business. After all, if you’re not doing anything to retain the customers you acquire, there’s no way for you to stay afloat, let alone grow and expand.

Churn rate doesn’t just reflect lost revenue. It also means you’re spending more on customer acquisition, which can cost up to five times more than customer retention. Keep a close eye on high SaaS churn rates because they can be detrimental to your bottom line.

Types of SaaS Churn Rates

There are essentially two main types of SaaS churn rates:

  • Customer level: A customer completely ends their relationship with your brand.
  • Subscription level: A customer remains with you but changes the level of their subscription.

Factors that Affect B2B SaaS Churn Rates

With either type, several factors can impact SaaS churn rates, including:

  • Seasonality: Churn rates may increase or decrease at certain times of the year.
  • Growth initiatives: If you launch an acquisition campaign, new members could skew data.
  • Demographics: Some people may simply be a better fit for your services than others.
  • Subscription level: Lower-tier services tend to have a higher churn rate than higher tiers.
  • Contract type: Short-term contracts may have higher termination rates than long-term subscriptions.

You can track factors to look for trends and patterns that enable you to plan your marketing efforts accordingly. Meanwhile, other factors that impact churn rates are customer-based and often unpredictable, including:

  • Financial issues: Customers can no longer afford their subscriptions.
  • Changed needs: Your product no longer meets the customer’s needs.
  • Poor customer experience: If someone has a negative experience, they’re likely to terminate their subscription.

Track all of these factors to identify areas of improvement that are in your control and what changes to make to attract new prospects, maintain happy customers, and reduce SaaS churn rates.

“Churn rate doesn’t just reflect lost revenue; it also means you’re spending more on customer acquisition, which can cost up to five times more than customer retention.”

How to Calculate Churn Rate for SaaS

Because there are so many variables that can affect its outcome, B2B SaaS churn rates can be a complex concept. However, it’s a fairly easy figure to calculate. First, you’ll need to determine the amount of time you want to evaluate (monthly or annually). Then, you’ll need to identify the total number of customers you had at the beginning of that time and the total number of customers you lost in that amount of time. Those numbers will then work into the SaaS churn rate formula as follows:

(Lost Customers / Total Customers at the Start of Time Period) x 100 = Churn Rate

Let’s say you’re wanting to determine your monthly churn rate. If your business had 300 customers at the start of the month and you lost 20 by the end, you would divide 20 by 300. Then, you would multiply that answer (.07) by 100, for a total of a 7% monthly churn rate.

(20 / 300) x 100 = 7%

To keep track of your churn rates, you can maintain a spreadsheet with these figures, or you could simplify the calculating and tracking of your SaaS churn rates with a tool like ProfitWell. This cloud-based app delivers your subscription and financial metrics on one dashboard and can help optimize your pricing and reduce cancellations for lower churn rate.

The goal, of course, is to have the lowest churn rate possible. An acceptable average SaaS churn rate is typically anywhere from 2% to 8%. Anything higher than that could have a significant impact on your monthly recurring revenue.

Churn rate calculations are most beneficial when conducted over a longer timeframe. Short-term results on a daily or weekly basis won’t reveal much insight. But quarterly or annual churn can reveal far-reaching trends and yearly performance. You can see whether your marketing strategy is working and the efficacy of customer retention efforts.

Churn Rate Visibility Improves Acquisition Efforts

SaaS churn rates impact every aspect of your business. They provide the information you need to:

  • Improve customer service: If customers are leaving due to a negative experience, you can re-evaluate your customer service efforts.
  • Rethink customer onboarding: Create a new, smoother, more user-friendly onboarding process that makes customers excited to be new subscribers.
  • Provide better training: When teams don’t silo information and sales and support staff are on the same page, your company can provide a better experience for customers.
  • Seek feedback: At key points along the customer journey, you can check in and see what you could do better to satisfy your current customers.
  • Build deeper relationships: Connect with your customers on a more personal level and build relationships that last.
  • Incentivize current customers: Discount offers and giveaways can entice customers to stay.

Churn rates allow you to learn critical information about ways to improve your approach and current systems to better serve your customers, provide a more personalized experience, and encourage customer loyalty. This is important because 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.

B2B SaaS churn rates are especially important to marketers. By tracking churn rates and understanding customer behavior, you can adjust your business processes and marketing approach to improve the acquisition of qualified deals with higher customer lifetime value (CLV). A KPI for every SaaS company, CLV is the average amount of money you can expect to earn from one customer throughout the duration of their relationship with your brand. The greater the CLV, the more profitable the customer.

Knowing CLV helps you assess your marketing efforts and provides insight into important KPIs that help you plan current and future marketing strategies for optimal results. It gives you a better idea about your company’s overall profitability and can help you discover ways to increase ROI while decreasing customer acquisition costs. Even just knowing customer lifetime (how long a customer will be with your company) can be an asset. Use churn rate to calculate your customer lifetime as follows:

Customer Lifetime = 1 / Churn Rate

If your churn rate is 7%, then your customer lifetime is 1 / .07 = 14.28 months (or a little over one year). Understanding how long you have with your customer helps you plan an effective marketing strategy to not only make the most of the time you have with them, but to also create a retention strategy that entices them to maintain their subscription even longer.

“Churn rates allow you to learn critical information about ways to improve your approach and current systems to better serve your customers, provide a more personalized experience, and encourage customer loyalty.“

Implement a CRM for Marketing Insights

One of the best ways to combat high B2B SaaS churn rates is to focus on retention through customer relationship management (CRM). A growing industry valued at $69.31 billion, CRM is software that helps you manage all relationships and engagement with prospective and current customers. CRM systems like HubSpot can help you make deeper connections with your audience, streamline operations and processes, and improve revenue generation.

Ultimately, CRM systems help you track your customer’s experience throughout their journey. CRM provides invaluable data that helps you identify areas of high churn and gives clues as to what caused it. Through CRM, you can:

  • Maintain open communication: Customers can give you invaluable feedback to shape your marketing efforts.
  • Understand your customers: Learn the needs, expectations, and preferences of your audience.
  • Channel people through the sales funnel: A better experience helps convert customers.

You also gain access to original advertising sources and can review messaging, channels, and placement to see what about your message didn’t resonate with your audience. You can review bounce rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement to determine which ads yielded high conversions and which ones fell flat.

Conversely, you can compare high churn ads with low churn ads to determine what aspects of your campaign are performing well and what edits you can make to improve overall performance. All of this gives you the information you need to make necessary adjustments and course corrections to ensure your marketing efforts are effective, impactful, and successful.

How Churn Rates Help You Understand Market Positioning

Churn accounts help you understand a lot about market positioning and messaging. Looking at lost accounts can show you why customers canceled their subscriptions and, even more, whether they left you for a competitor. If customers are choosing competing brands over yours, you know you need to take action to secure better market positioning.

Exit surveys can tell you why people left your company, providing you with an opportunity to make intentional and purposeful changes that help set you apart from your competition. You may need to review your price point, assess your customer service, or come up with innovative ideas to reimagine your products and services to better meet evolving consumer needs.

This data can also let you know whether your messaging is resonating with your audience. Wording, tone of voice, and technical explanations may not be connecting with your customers. You might not be adequately presenting the benefits of your services, so customers aren’t seeing the full value of your offerings. In this way, churn rates can help you educate clients about best use cases, so they have the confidence they need to subscribe to your services.

Churn rate also helps you gain an understanding of your customer base. You can learn purchase behavior, habits, and see common reasons for purchases and terminations. All of this helps you qualify potential clients and target the people most likely to benefit from your offerings. Targeting the right audience ensures higher success rates and lower churn rates, resulting in more revenue and continued growth.

“Churn rates can help you qualify potential clients and target the people most likely to benefit from your offerings.”

Reduce Your B2B SaaS Churn Rates

Churn rates provide invaluable metrics that can shape your business operations and marketing strategies for better customer acquisition, higher retention, and greater revenue generation. Behind the Work provides digital marketing solutions for B2B SaaS clients that attract quality leads and help grow your organization. Enhance your digital marketing strategy with data from B2B SaaS churn rates to boost your overall performance.

Visit Behind the Work today to learn more about how we can help SaaS churn rates.

What is RevOps? A Revenue Operations Guide

Contributed by Sonny Sultani

Revenue Operations is something that has become increasingly popular in the business world in recent years. However, understanding Revenue Operations, or RevOps, can sometimes feel overwhelming. This Revenue Operations guide will help you explore many of the ins and outs of RevOps.

In today’s high-demand market, 78% of customers expect consistent interactions from all business departments, according to Salesforce. However, 59% of customers say each department feels unique instead of one cohesive company.

Revenue Operations works to overcome that disconnect and deliver a seamless experience for all customers no matter which departments they interact with.

Read through this guide to see if RevOps is right for you and learn how to implement it into your business strategy.

What Is RevOps?

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the alignment of sales, marketing, and operations to maximize revenue potential. RevOps fully integrates customer retention, the marketing funnel, and sales processes so that each organization has the same goals and uses unified data.

“RevOps fully integrates customer retention, the marketing funnel, and sales processes so that each organization has the same goals and uses unified data.”

It includes nearly every business operation like identifying revenue leaks, reevaluating prices, and detecting at-risk customers.

In the end, the goal of RevOps is to increase business revenue and build better relationships with customers.

Consider implementing RevOps when:

  • Your sales team is struggling to close deals
  • Your marketing team is losing qualified leads
  • Your operations team is performing at a snail’s pace

How to Implement RevOps

1. Audit the Customer Journey

The primary goal of RevOps is to provide a cohesive experience for your customers. Auditing the customer journey is the first step toward a unified vision. You are looking for any disconnects between departments.

  • Examine your existing customer-facing content and make sure it aligns with the buyer’s journey. Plan to fill in any content gaps.
  • Audit your CRM technology for your sales, marketing, and customer service departments to ensure they are tracking all customer interactions.
  • Assess your website and other digital channels to eliminate any barriers for potential buyers.

2. Define and Align Customer Stages

Create goals and definitions for each stage of the customer journey. Make sure each team understands and agrees with these definitions and goals.

  • Evaluate your analytical process to make sure you are collecting the right customer information at each point in the sale pipeline.
  • Examine your tech stack to look for redundancies or gaps in your tools and software.
  • Give all teams guidelines for your new streamlined RevOps procedures. This should include sales, content marketing, and the customer experience.

3. Build a RevOps Foundation

Once you have identified problem areas and created new definitions, you can start building a solid foundation for your new Revenue Operations processes.

You should create:

  • A plan for customer acquisition that focuses on meeting or exceeding client expectations.
  • Streamlined workflows that collect accurate data and move prospects quickly through the sales pipeline.
  • Automated task queues that include follow-up emails and other customer touchpoints.
  • A RevOps dashboard that identifies current customer bottlenecks.

4. Optimize Your RevOps Strategy

Once you put your Revenue Operations strategy into place, the work is still not finished. You will need to continually adjust and optimize your processes as your business grows.

  • Create a routine RevOps meeting schedule to ensure alignment across all departments. Make sure all department heads recognize their roles in contributing to the growth and success of your RevOps plan.
  • Analyze your RevOps dashboard each month to identify which phase of the customer journey needs the most attention.

What Makes RevOps an Ideal Business Solution

RevOps is an ideal business solution because it gives each department within a company the same goal – to create a cohesive customer experience that ultimately leads to higher revenues.

“RevOps is an ideal business solution because it gives each department within a company the same goal – to create a cohesive customer experience that ultimately leads to higher revenues.”

There are a few key benefits that make RevOps an easy business decision:

  • Predictable Growth: Knowing what to expect can make a big difference in the success of your business. A solid RevOps process can give you more predictable growth. This can help you feel more confident in making certain business decisions, such as investing in new markets or creating new products.
  • More Transparency: In many business meetings, each department is focused on its specialty and individual goals without understanding what the other teams are doing. This can cause competition and friction between teams, especially if problems arise. With a RevOps program, your teams have complete visibility among each other. Each team sees the same big picture, and this creates a seamless transition from one team to the next.
  • Better Collaboration: With a unified goal and more transparency, your teams are more likely to work together. RevOps helps promote healthy collaboration and reduces infighting since all departments are working towards the same goal.
  • Improved Customer Retention: With a solid RevOps plan in place, each department has access to the same data. This means when they interact with customers it creates a seamless experience no matter where in the pipeline that customer is. This smooth customer journey will naturally lead to improved customer retention and higher revenue.

Revenue Operations Team Structure

In your business, each department likely has its own manager and possibly even a high-level executive. While all these team leaders are part of the revenue operations strategy, it is a good idea to create a new position or team that can oversee the transition with an unbiased eye.

1. Hire a Solid Generalist

In the new role of revenue operations manager or revenue operations vice president, it is a good idea to start with a single person. You can either choose a new hire or promote an existing employee with a strong understanding of your business structure.

You need someone who is comfortable working with all your departments and doesn’t favor one department over another. This means you need a solid generalist.

A RevOps specialist should be familiar with and able to learn a wide range of technical programs. They will need to analyze data and have a good understanding of what that data means. This person also needs a growth mindset and must be willing to try new things. Permit them to experiment, create new processes, and fail.

“A RevOps specialist should be familiar with and able to learn a wide range of technical programs. They will need to analyze data and have a good understanding of what that data means. This person also needs a growth mindset and must be willing to try new things. Permit them to experiment, create new processes, and fail.”

As a final consideration, your new revenue operations specialist should have a strong personality that can convince department heads and general staff that change is a good thing.

2. Grow Your RevOps Team

As your RevOps plan starts to take shape, you will likely need to expand the team. Your RevOps manager or vice president will need a team of specialists to help guide the adjustments for each department. There are numerous revenue operations job roles available.

  • Sales Ops: The Sales Ops manager on the RevOps team is primarily responsible for the CRM system. They will choose what data gets included and collected in the CRM. They will also work directly with the sales representative to train them and determine their quotas. As part of the RevOps team, they will help standardize sales processes and customer materials.
  • Marketing Ops: A Marketing Ops manager will be focused on marketing data. They will track information like pipeline, revenue, and leads. They will also work through marketing attribution to try to determine which marketing channels are performing the best. Working with RevOps, the Marketing Ops team will determine how many leads are needed to achieve revenue goals each period.
  • Customer Success Ops: A Customer Success (CS) Ops manager documents the customer journey and what it takes to improve customer support. They will work to improve workflow efficiency to help keep customers happy. As part of the RevOps team, they will handle customer health scoring and forecasting.
  • Ops Analysts: If your RevOps team continues to grow, you might need additional RevOps Analysts. These will be people who specialize in data analytics and spend their time working with your tools and software. Many of these analysts will be SQL or BI specialists who are experts in collecting data.

3. Create a Unified Data Stream 

The goal of any RevOps team is to create a single stream of unified data. You can accomplish this primarily through a CRM system. However, you can use other business intelligence (BI) tools to help you visualize the data.

Your Ops Analysts can create RevOps dashboards for each department and position. This will help each person in the company visualize his or her role in the overall RevOps mission.

Once created, your unified data stream will take constant upkeep. Your teams will continue to evolve, processes will change, and your products will improve – all these changes will require continual maintenance. However, the return will be well worth the investment.

4. Give Your RevOps Team the Power They Need  

Knowing what needs to be done and having the power to do it go hand in hand. When you create your RevOps team, make sure you give them the power and authority they need to act.

“Knowing what needs to be done and having the power to do it go hand in hand. When you create your RevOps team, make sure you give them the power and authority they need to act.“

If they are limited to handing over a proposal to other team leaders, the plan will likely fail. The head of RevOps needs to have as much, or more, decision-making power as the heads of other departments.

Revenue Operations vs Sales Operations

While the term revenue operations is relatively new, most business executives are familiar with the term sales operations. This can lead to some confusion in thinking that revenue operations is just a new term for what they already know.

Instead, you can think of sales operations as a part of revenue operations. Sales ops is primarily concerned with the company’s sales, while RevOps is focused on the entire customer journey.

For example, a sales operations specialist might be responsible for training sales staff, creating lead scoring models, and helping sales reps hit their quotas.

A RevOps specialist, on the other hand, will focus on connecting sales with marketing and other general business operations so that every department is working together on the same goals. When working as a single team, each department will create more opportunities for revenue growth.

What to Look for in a RevOps Vendor

Choosing the right RevOps vendor can have a huge impact on how successful your RevOps program will be.

A good RevOps vendor should exhibit these four characteristics:

  • Provide trustworthy automation and data: You want a RevOps solution that gives you automated data in real-time, so you always know the information you have is up to date. It should automatically gather data from sources like your CRM, calendar, email, and other business systems.
  • Offer deep revenue insights: You want a RevOps solution that goes beyond surface-level information to give you new insights. With these deep insights, you can uncover customer pitfalls and bottlenecks that are slowing down your revenue stream.
  • Have reliable performance: With a RevOps solution that gives you reliable performance and data month after month, you can spend more time focused on achieving your goals instead of digging through data for the answers you need.
  • Deliver predictable revenue: A good RevOps solution will help you reliably predict what your revenue will look like in the future. When you can trust that information, it gives you the freedom to explore new business opportunities. Perhaps you want to expand into a new market or introduce a new product?

Revenue Operations Resources

If you want to learn even more about RevOps, there are numerous revenue operations books and revenue operations courses available. Here is a quick snapshot of what you can choose from.

Revenue Operations: A New Way to Align Sales & Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth

In this book, written by Stephen G. Diorio and Chris K. Hummel, they explore what it takes to grow a business in the 21st century. They look at the practical steps you can take to align your teams and unlock more revenue potential. It includes real case studies from across numerous industries and offers a step-by-step approach to connecting your departmental infrastructure.

The Revenue Acceleration Playbook: Creating an Authentic Buyer Journey Across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success  

If you are ready to accelerate your sales, start making connections. That is the idea that author, Brent Keltner, presents in his book. He focuses on helping businesses create a more personalized and connected experience for their customers. He includes more than 20 real-life examples of businesses creating authentic customer journeys and increasing their sales.

Revenue Operations Courses

If you want to become a RevOps expert or make your resume more appealing for a future revenue operations role, consider these revenue operations courses.

  • Revenue Operations Certification: Hubspot offers a free RevOps certification class. It offers a solid foundation in basic revenue operations principles. It takes about 5 hours to complete this course.
  • Unleashing ROI: Offered by the RevOps Co-op, this 10-week course is designed to help you grow a career in revenue operations. It includes live instruction, permanent access to the course materials, a chat group with your cohort, and peer-reviewed work.
  • Revenue Growth Architecture School: Offered by Pavilion, the goal of this class is to teach business professionals how to design and achieve sustainable growth. It is free to Pavilion Associate and Executive members and lasts for two weeks.

Explore the Revenue Operations Guide with Behind the Work

At Behind the Work, we believe in offering companies a predictable revenue flow. Revenue Operations is an essential part of that process. We aim to deliver a seamless Revenue Operations process that can help promote transparency and teamwork.

If this revenue operations guide has piqued your interest, we can help you improve your revenue flow.

Ready to take the next step in your Revenue Operations journey? Contact Behind the Work today to get started.

Why Technical Expertise is Essential in Marketing for Manufacturers

Contributed by Sonny Sultani

There was a time when all a manufacturer had to do was focus on innovation and sell quality products at affordable prices. However, to stand out in today’s competitive online marketplace, companies need to focus on digital marketing in the manufacturing industry. After all, it’s likely that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales will take place using digital channels. Not only is a digital manufacturing marketing strategy essential, but marketing for manufacturers must include technical expertise.

The manufacturing industry targets a niche audience with very specific products and services. As a result, technical expertise is key to communicating not only to prospective buyers but also to designers and engineers. Companies have to be able to explain features and functions of (sometimes) highly complex products and processes so buyers understand what they’re purchasing, so technical teams can design and build them. For this reason, a successful manufacturing marketing strategy relies on a complete understanding of the technical aspects of the business and the products they sell.

Learn how technical expertise impacts marketing for manufacturers and helps in attracting, retaining, and growing current accounts for continued success.

“The manufacturing industry targets a niche audience with very specific products and services.”

What is the Role of Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry?

Marketing for manufacturers is all about communicating the benefits of a company’s product to its prospective buyers. It’s one thing to create the best widget in the industry, but if it doesn’t provide value to your audience, it won’t sell. A successful marketing plan for manufacturing companies helps to connect with consumers, remove barriers surrounding understanding, and provide useful solutions to buyers for higher conversions and business growth.

To clearly communicate how a manufacturer’s products deliver value, marketers have to understand how they work. Marketing for manufacturers is interesting because, in this industry, marketers must be able to explain technical concepts to people who are also technically minded, as well as laymen who may not fully understand what products do or how they function. By having a thorough understanding of the technicality of the products they promote, marketers can bridge the gap and appeal to all levels of the audience.

Tracking the buyer’s journey will tell you where your clients came from before they signed up for your trial. Those previous touchpoints will be key channels for displaying your PPC ads to increase the number of buyers ready to sign up.

However, the attribution model you use for tracking your buyers and their touchpoints will impact how you view your channels. An attribution model is how you distribute value from a sale among each contributing channel.

If you use a last-click attribution model, you only attribute the trial signup to the last channel the buyer visited. This model doesn’t consider other stops they made leading up to the trial signup. For example, that same buyer might have spent significant time on social media earlier in their sales journey, making that channel another valuable location for ads.

Seeing the entire journey in your attribution model is the most effective way to choose the best channels for your PPC ads.

“By having a thorough understanding of the technicality of the products they promote, marketers can bridge the gap and appeal to all levels of the audience.”

Ultimately, a marketer’s job is to attract, retain, and grow current accounts for sustainability and longevity. Ways to do this effectively include:

  • Know your audience: marketers must know the demographics, background, and level of technical experience their audience has to create custom content that resonates and delivers value
  • Build an online presence: remain active on digital channels and consistently publish informative, useful information that educates, explains, and informs
  • Post authoritative content: position yourself as an industry leader with expert content that shares trends, forecasts, and findings

Manufacturing marketers who incorporate technical expertise help to earn credibility, build consumer trust, and develop customer loyalty. All of this helps to drive more business to the company and convert more prospects to customers.

How to Leverage Technical Expertise in Marketing for Manufacturers

One of the most effective ways to attract new prospects and retain current customers is to create a positive user experience. Typically this means delivering value and solving problems in a way that reduces friction and results in happy customers. In manufacturing, the buying process lends itself to several opportunities for consumer frustration.

Making sense of confusing technical drawings and complex industrial design while trying to purchase expensive industrial equipment can be an aggravating process. Luckily, a B2B marketing strategy provides several ways to eliminate those frustrations and earn loyal customers. Here are two ways a manufacturing marketing agency can leverage technical expertise for customer satisfaction.

1. Whitepapers

Whitepapers are educational, objective, long-form reports that focus not on selling a product but on providing solutions. They’re a terrific way to leverage your technical knowledge, as their expert-level data helps explain confusing technical data in a way that audience members can understand. Whitepapers help to:

  • Identify your customer’s problem and its greater impact
  • Recommend a solution
  • Provide research and credible statistics to support the solution

Readers can download your whitepapers from your website (often in exchange for customer contact information). Although not specifically a sales tool, whitepapers can be a powerful aspect of a sales strategy for manufacturing companies. They can help you create a contact list of prospective customers and serve as a resource that builds customer trust and loyalty.

Whitepapers that describe advanced capability and technical processes are especially beneficial as a marketing tool because they:

  • Build your reputation: position yourself as an industry expert and thought leader in your field
  • Gain consumer confidence: authority content helps people feel more certain in their purchase decision
  • Drive website traffic: people will visit your site to seek out your expert-level content
  • Generate revenue: buyers can see why your solutions are superior and will choose you over your competitor

Well-written whitepapers that explain technical concepts in a way your audience can understand help to deliver value while reducing friction.

2. Video Tutorials

One of the greatest drawbacks to a digital marketplace is the inability of buyers to test a product before they make a purchase. This is especially detrimental in the manufacturing industry, where features and functionality can be difficult to envision from a photograph or technical description. Video content can be instrumental in converting customers because it allows people to see firsthand the mechanics of how something works. There are currently more than 244 billion digital video viewers in America. Videos are engaging, entertaining, and demonstrative.

“Video content can be instrumental in converting customers because it allows people to see firsthand the mechanics of how something works.”

In manufacturing, video tutorials can do everything from show how a product works to how to submit files for processing. Seeing an actual demonstration gives buyers the confidence they need to commit to a purchase. In fact, video convinces 77% of consumers to buy. As a marketing tool, video tutorials can:

  • Help you connect with your customer
  • Provide invaluable information that converts
  • Set you apart from the competition
  • Boost SEO for greater visibility
  • Generate revenue

Videos are highly shareable, so they’re an effective tool to boost manufacturing marketing. They’re effective for the manufacturing industry because they can present information in three different, yet equally powerful, ways:

  • Explainer video: short videos that express how your company or products solve problems
  • How-to video: step-by-step instructions that teach viewers technical processes or ideas that are too complex for text descriptions
  • Demo video: shows people how to use a product or complete a task

Through video content, you can connect with consumers on a more personal level and give a face and personality to your brand. This helps build trust and earn credibility, leading to strong customer relationships that last.

How Do You Market an Industrial Company?

Just like any business, marketing is crucial to the current and future success of your company. You have to know your audience, their needs and pain points, preferences, and buying habits. Use that information to identify solutions you provide that benefit them and deliver value. Create custom content that is relevant to their needs and alleviates their concerns. Learn where they’re spending their time online and reach them with your messaging on those channels.

The digital age has made it easier than ever to connect with prospective buyers. The Thomas Register of Manufacturers is the leading comprehensive directory of American and Canadian manufacturers. Google adopted the registry (originally a set of bound books) and renamed it ThomasNet, now an online resource. As a result, companies can reach younger procurement officers and digital marketing can add enterprise clients where it was once not possible to do so.

Think about your unique traits that help you stand out from the competition. Highlight features, services, or technical expertise you have that nobody else can offer. Remember to always keep your customers in mind and deliver solutions that meet their needs. Building relationships will produce benefits that last beyond sales.

“Building relationships will produce benefits that last beyond sales.“

How Can Manufacturing Increase Revenue?

With 638,583 American manufacturing businesses currently in operation, you have to find ways to set yourself apart from the competition. Digital marketing and marketers with technical expertise are key to attracting more business to your manufacturing company. Here are three ways manufacturing can increase revenue.

1. Create a Positive Experience

One way to drive sales is to ensure your customers are satisfied with their experience with your brand. Customer relationship management (CRM) is critical in attracting new prospects and retaining current customers. CRM for manufacturers helps you manage all interactions with your audience, which yields the following benefits:

  • Improved sales performance: all conversations are located in one place so teams have access to all information and no sales opportunities fall through the cracks
  • Forecast future sales: seeing potential deals can help you plan for upcoming demand
  • Smoother supply chain: CRM provides visibility and insights about operations and processes

CRM systems help you ensure you’re providing a positive customer experience, which in turn sets you apart from the competition and drives business your way.

2. Innovation

Your manufacturing business should be constantly finding new and creative ways to solve your audience’s problems. Whether it’s a matter of improving the features of your current products or coming up with entirely new solutions, the company that stays ahead of the competition will attract the attention of the buyers in need.

Innovation can also revolve around your processes and operations. Find ways to streamline your efforts to make things run more smoothly and efficiently. These kinds of creative solutions can attract the attention of other industry leaders who want to learn from your ideas. They can also entice customers looking for a more effective way of doing business to give your brand a try.

Whether it’s new products or new processes, you have to be able to explain these new ideas to your audience. Use research to back up your claims and reputable resources to prove your findings. When you have the ideas, tools, and technical expertise, you’ll entice buyers to convert, thus generating more revenue for your business.

3. Strengthen Your Online Presence

With such a focus on digital interactions in today’s marketplace, if you want to generate more revenue, you have to strengthen your online presence. Use SEO to earn higher search engine ranking placement so you can increase visibility and drive more traffic to your site. Craft compelling content that includes high-performing keywords so your material aligns with online searches. Incorporate quality backlinks that offer valuable resources to your readers.

Engage your audience on social media platforms. Highly targetable and easy to share information, social media is a great way to build brand awareness and identity while learning more about your prospective customers. Chat threads and forums will reveal candid feedback about you and your competitors. Discover common industry concerns or problems and learn how you can develop a solution that would earn customers and generate more revenue.

Maximize Your Marketing for Manufacturers

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with technical expertise is a winning combination for attracting new prospects, retaining current customers, and growing current accounts. Behind The Work is a manufacturing marketing agency that can help position manufacturers to succeed with technical expertise. Enhance your digital marketing strategy and generate more revenue for your manufacturing business.

Ready to improve your performance? Visit Behind The Work today.

A Beginner’s Guide to Local Digital Advertising

Contributed by Cailey Kidman

Even if you aren’t trying to reach a global audience, your online presence is vital for generating leads and attracting new customers. However, a local digital advertising strategy will differ from other digital marketing strategies because you have a narrower audience and target specific channels.

Explore how local digital advertising can help your business and learn six local advertising ideas to get you started.

What Is Local Digital Advertising?

Local digital advertising is an online marketing strategy that targets local customers through paid content. It works well for small businesses or those with local services who don’t need to reach customers on the national or international level.

Paying for a general ad that will appear in someone’s search query on the other side of the country wastes time and resources. Instead, you can target those within your community through digital local advertising efforts that combine knowledge of local searches with popular channels in your community. This maximizes your returns by reaching quality leads most likely to purchase from you.

The Importance of Having a Local Online Presence

Your online presence is essential for providing information, attracting leads, and communicating with customers. About 85% of consumers perform online research before making a purchase. If your business doesn’t appear in those searches, you will miss out on potential new customers. You don’t need to have a broad audience group for digital advertising to be effective. Even small businesses or those with a niche audience can benefit from local digital ads.

Digital advertising is one way to spread brand awareness and guarantee you show up in more searches. It works best alongside other advertising methods. Direct mail is the most effective form of local advertising, making up 22.7% of ad revenue. Online local advertising comes in second at 17% of revenue but continues to grow in popularity.

6 Ways to Get Started with Local Digital Advertising

Use these six local advertising examples to start your business’s local area digital marketing efforts:

PPC Using Local Search Keywords

Over 76% of customers who search for a local business will visit that business within 24 hours. Tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush will give local keyword that your potential customers often use. Google is on your side and will often prioritize local results in search queries but targeting your location through keywords will increase your rankings further.

Your location-specific keyword should include industry terms and synonyms, like your products or services. You can create a long-tail keyword with less competition by adding popular modifiers, like the terms “best,” “one-day delivery,” or a specific occasion. To make the search local, add a location to your keyword.

For example, a small bakery in Virginia could use the keyword “best cupcakes in Arlington” in their advertising to get their content in front of their community.

Once you find your keywords, you have several options for how you use these phrases. You can get free local advertising by using those keywords throughout your online content. Otherwise, you can invest in Google ads or other PPC options where you bid on keywords for your ads. When you set up your PPC ad on Google or other search engine, be sure to include location settings that focus on a specific zip code or region.

Google My Business Listing

About 46% of Google searches are looking for local results. Google pulls search results from online content and its own database called Google My Business. This is a collection of business listings that help consumers find information, including:

  • Hours of operation
  • Contact information
  • Reviews
  • Products
  • Special accommodations
  • Directions
  • Images

Your business profile is a way to update customers in real-time and connect with potential customers. You can also communicate directly with customers through your profile.

Local Directory Listings

While Google My Business is one of the most popular online business directories, it isn’t your only option. There are several other directory sites to consider for increasing your visibility. Nearly 88% of consumers shop locally once a week, and 90% of purchases occur within 15 miles from a consumer’s home or office.

The number of directories you are part of increases your chances of appearing in searches.

Improve your local advertising by claiming and promoting your listings on sites like:

  • Yelp
  • Apple Maps
  • LinkedIn Company Directory
  • Bing
  • HubSpot
  • Yellowbook
  • Moz
  • Angi
  • Foursquare
  • Yahoo
  • MapQuest
  • Better Business Bureau
  • Thumbtack
  • Nextdoor

Pay careful attention to all your business profile options and take advantage of every profile area. Anything you enter in your profile can be a local keyword search term and improves your rankings and relevance for users.

Local Influencer Advertising

The

Social Media Ads

Over 4.48 billion people use social media. That is over half of the world’s population. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with over 2.9 million users, followed by YouTube with 2.5 million users.

About 62% of businesses use Facebook for their marketing, with some reporting conversion rates of 9.2%. One of the reasons it is so successful for advertising is that about 15% of consumers use the platform for finding and purchasing products. Additionally, Instagram is also a popular channel for advertising as 70% of shoppers use it to discover new products.

If you advertise through a social media platform, use settings to target a specific location. Since users often enter an address when creating their profile, you have greater control over who sees your ad because of more available consumer data for targeted ad placement

Local Advertising Sites

What other digital platforms and local advertising apps are available in your community? Explore what your neighbors watch, listen to, and read to discover new places where you can purchase an advertising spot.

For example, podcasts offer opportunities to reach new audiences with little competition. One news report showed that only 15% of advertisers use streaming audio ads. However, this low number isn’t because it isn’t effective, but because most don’t understand how to purchase spots on channels like local podcasts.

Local podcasts offer more control than other audio advertisements, which can help with targeting local audiences. Because of the low awareness about this channel, you also have less competition.

Create a Local Advertising Strategy That Converts

Knowing where you will advertise is only half of the process. The next step is to create content that resonates with your audience and leads to conversions.

Contact our content specialists to create effective local advertisements for your business.