4 Ways To Use A B2B Appointment Setting Service Partner

B2B appointment setting service partners can be a huge help to your organization’s lead generation strategy. Many people assume that appointment setting providers simply set appointments for their organization and nothing else but there are many more ways these partnerships can be used.

Below are a few of our favorite lead generation projects to partner with clients on.

1) Inbound Lead Nurturing

Did you know that 71% of qualified leads are never followed up with? What’s more, those that are followed up with are only touched 1.3 times.

Strategic follow-up matters. The ideal inbound lead follow-up strategy combines both an urgency in response as well as a committed sales cadence if the prospect does not immediately answer.

We follow a proven cadence that begins with a phone call within 5 minutes of a form being submitted and ends two weeks later after multiple phone, email, and social interactions.

2) Surveys and Marketing Intelligence

Don’t have a great grasp on your target market? Acquiring high-quality market research is difficult for any company but can be even more challenging when you have critical business decisions hanging in the balance and need to gather customer feedback quickly. Stacking this project onto someone's already-full desk, or attempting to hire someone internally to tackle it can lead to mistakes being made or quality suffering.

This is the type of project that B2B appointment setting providers can excel at.

3) Lapsed Customer Reactivation

The number one reason a customer does not come back is because they are not asked. For those that  would but don't, a B2B appointment setting service partner can compliment your customer retention approach by offering multiple opportunities.

New products are launched by e-commerce companies  rapidly. Occasionally, product upgrades address previous issues significantly enough that customers who have purchased before are willing to purchase again.

In these instances, targeted sales campaigns focused on  the customer’s previous shopping habits can provide an influx of new customers at a lower than average cost per acquisition.

4) Cold Calling

Lack of resources, such as staff, funding, and time, remains the biggest obstacle to successful lead generation for 61% of B2B marketers.

Cold calling can be an exceptionally powerful tool. It’s a strategy that helps lead business owners to introduce their solution to buyers who otherwise may have never heard of them. It’s a time-tested way to keep the top of the sales funnel full while your closers focus on closing. Not to mention, it’s a useful supplement to the inbound leads that come in from marketing departments. There is simply no strategy that replaces the commitment of dialing through a list and having real conversations with prospects.

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Perks Of Working With Incept

Incept differentiates itself by its fractional pricing, flexibility, alignment with your culture, and depth of sales experience:

Fractional pricing:

By paying a flat monthly subscription fee, you get the benefits of lead generation and appointment setting without the additional management and overhead of a full time employee in-house.

Flexibility:

The fractional allocation can flex up and down with seasonal sales demand and business needs. We also exercise a lot of flexibility in our strategy, cadence, etc. so that our clients have the highest likelihood of success. We do not believe in set it and forget it.

Cultural alignment:

Because our clients work directly with a dedicated Account Growth Specialist, they get the benefit of one-on-one calibration meetings, daily feedback emails, and freedom to contact their AGS as often as they’d like throughout the day. This allows the AGS to feel like they are a part of the client team and has a big impact on the outcomes of our clients’ projects.

Depth of experience:

We’ve lived and breathed sales and marketing for 25 years and prioritize continued education for our team.

Interested in learning more? Let’s talk!

Digital Trends B2B Companies Need to Focus on in 2020 - Part 2

B2B Content Marketing Trends

Staying up-to-date is extremely important when it comes to digital B2B marketing strategies – digital trends continue to shift and change. If you didn’t catch Part 1 (Internal Digital Trends), you can find that in this blog post!

We understand that producing client work is a top priority, but don’t forget to produce quality content to market yourself as a brand.

In today’s market, it may seem hard to standout from the competition, but we laid out a couple important areas to keep in mind when advertising yourself as a B2B company.

Related Post: How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Lead Generation Strategy

Creating Mature Content

Only 28% of B2B companies are in the sophisticated/mature phase of content marketing maturity.

Never sacrifice quality for quantity, but make sure your B2B company is posting… a lot. Here’s the trend that’s happening with content creation: brands are creating multiple pieces of content (pictures, videos, graphics, blogs, etc.) from other pieces of content/information.

Let’s break it down.

If you have a blog post that has loads of information, don’t limit yourself to just the one blog post. Create short video clips of someone talking about a fact or two or design an infographic with key takeaways. Post these new pieces of content as a social media post across all platforms!

In the end, repurposing content is everything in today’s online marketing world.

Related Post: 4 Ways to Use Facebook for B2B Lead Generation

Blogging 

One trend that was popular, and still is, is blogging. Yes, consistent blogging is a must, but the formatting of blog posts is the current trend to keep an eye on.

Gone are the days of having simply text throughout a blog post. Many B2B companies are creating videos, graphics, and infographics to help viewers digest information more efficiently.

Here are a couple other key areas to keep in mind with blogging in 2020:

• Find topics that your audience will find engaging.

• Deliver value – give readers relevant and useful information.

• Incorporate custom visuals to keep the readers engaged.

• Follow SEO best practices – incorporate ALL the relevant keywords!

• Create easy to find CTAs for readers to subscribe to your blog or download content.

• Guest blog to reach new followers.

• Connect with industry influencers.

Staying on top of Video Creation

There are some impressive statistics about how video is making a huge impact for businesses today. A whopping 70% of B2B buyers and researchers are watching videos throughout the buyers journey.

So, what have your video efforts been like?

Many B2B companies shy away from video for two reasons: it’s timely and it’s difficult to choose topics to make content on. However, companies better become comfortable with video creation because it’s projected to grow to 82% of all internet traffic by 2021.

Don’t let the statistics scare you. There are countless avenues that your B2B company can go down with video creation.

Here are a few ideas that your B2B company can utilize:

• Brand Videos: Showcase the mission and vision of your B2B company. Tell a story of who you are as a brand, and explain why you’re in the industry that you’re in. You can do this in a video with team members or even in a fun gif!

• Product/Service Videos: Display what you’re offering your audience – seeing how beneficial your product or service is can make a world of a difference.

• Informative Videos: Take a blog post that’s jam-packed with valuable information and turn it into a video. You need to appeal to every type of consumer – some people prefer to retain information through video rather than through reading.

• Case Story Videos: Explaining a case study is extremely beneficial for a company. It allows you to tell a success story with data to back you up.

• Office Culture Videos: Every client loves to see that the B2B company they’re working with has a fun and healthy work environment. Showing the personal side to a brand makes them relatable and exciting to work with!

• Testimonials: Asking clients to say a few words about how they’ve benefited from your product/service can give your B2B company some serious credit!

• Live Streaming: Utilize the live streaming features on social media! Try having a Q&A with your followers – interacting with viewers makes you stand out as a brand.

We are so excited for everything that we’ve learned in 2019 to make 2020 better for

Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy

Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.

Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.

In this download, you’ll receive:

• The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.

• 4 essential elements to add in every content piece.

• Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement

• Key strategies for lead generation

Digital Trends B2B Companies Need to Focus on in 2020 - Part 1

B2B companies should always be up-to-date with upcoming trends, both from an internal and external point of view. If you haven’t yet begun to consider your digital marketing plan for 2020, we’re sharing some tips on trends to get that plan in place!

Below, we layout what trends your B2B brand needs to focus on in 2020 from an internal standpoint – keep these key points in mind, and your company will not only function smoother, but it will also have streamlined plan in place to help your business grow.

Internal Level Digital Trends

1. Revisiting your current organizational structure

At times, companies can get stuck in the same organizational structure that’s been in place for a while; they aren’t willing to take a step back and analyze what the company could be doing better from a structural level.

Are there new goals that should be considered?

How much time is being put towards high priority projects?

Are you tracking the right metrics?

In most cases, companies experience confusion about roles and lack of prioritization. These issues alone can have a direct impact on your digital initiatives.

What to do:

Essentially, marketing teams need to communicate on a consistent basis about what the digital marketing goals are for the company, and which metrics to keep an eye on.

Don’t be afraid to switch up team members’ roles and goals. B2B marketing can be extremely stressful, so losing sight of long-term goals can happen quickly. Take a step back and see which short-term goals you can redesign in order to achieve your long-term goals more efficiently.

2. Sticking to a strategic digital plan

It’s obvious that the digital world of marketing isn’t going anywhere – however, only 10 percent of B2B companies say that digital is a top investment priority.

Ignoring the importance of a solid digital strategy is going to set companies back farther than they think. Most brands consider their digital efforts a “side job” – leaving them with poorly strategized content that never gets enough momentum to make a material difference.

B2B companies need to realize that potential customers are on digital platforms daily. Whether the industry wants to accept it or not, conversations on digital platforms are critical to growing awareness and a customer base.

3. Sophisticating your branding

With the digital world becoming more prominent in everyday life, individuals are becoming much more aware of companies’ branding efforts. Unfortunately, many B2B companies put branding on the back-burner in order to focus on client work.

While producing quality work for clients is a top priority for every B2B organization, brands can’t forget to market themselves in an effective way.

Logo - is it starting to look dated? Make sure it stands out from the competition.

Verbiage – how is your B2B company communicating with your audience? The wording on everything related to your brand should relay the same messaging and overall feel.

Website – is it user-friendly? Most internet users are using their phones to interact online. Having a smartphone-friendly site is a must.

Social Media – are your posts showcasing your brand? Do they speak to your audience’s interests and pain points? Social media is the #1 place people visit to understand a brand more personally.

If you’re still trying to figure out what social media platforms will yield the most benefit, this blog post on choosing social platforms will help you!

With being in the second half of the year, 2020 needs to be top of mind to stay ahead of the game. Start getting that digital marketing plan in place so you set your whole team up for success next year.

Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy

Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.

Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.

In this download, you’ll receive:

• The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.

• 4 essential elements to add in every content piece.

• Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement

• Key strategies for lead generation

4 Outsourced B2B Appointment Setting Benefits

For a sales professional, attempting to find qualified, interested sales leads can be a daunting task. That’s why outsourcing lead generation and appointment-setting efforts is so important to maintain your sales funnel and increase ROI for your organization.

What Does an Appointment-Setter Do?

We can go on all day about why you need to outsource your appointment setting, but what’s that going to help if you don’t yet understand what appointment setters do?

As your lead generation partner, we know the benefits of outsourcing appointment setting and how important it is to your company’s growth. So, whether you’re still considering whether outsourcing appointment setting or you’re ready to talk about partnering, this blog post will help you understand how beneficial it is!

Some tasks you can outsource to an appointment setter:

1. Cold calling for list building/development

2. Initiate calls prior to a conference or trade show

3. Initiate follow-up calls after a conference or trade show

4. Market research

5. Provides information about a company to increase awareness

6. Set up appointments for your sales team

Benefits of Appointment Setting

Increases Brand Awareness

Even if an appointment doesn’t result in a direct sale, any outreach has the added benefit of increasing your brand’s awareness in the marketplace. Let an outsourced partner be your front lines to create more name recognition in your industry.

Establishes Interest from Qualified Prospects

Part of what makes sales so difficult is the time needed to qualify true prospects. Outbound phone efforts take the guess work out of whether this prospect is a good fit. Qualifying questions during the discovery process allow you to focus on those leads with an already established interest in your organization.

Gives You Time to Position the Sale Effectively

One of the most underrated benefits of setting B2B appointments is that it gives the sales professional time to strategize on their game plan for the sales call. In most cases, the prospects’ pain points have been determined in the initial outreach call which allows the sales professional to know what to cover in the appointment.

Allows You to Focus on Closing

By far the greatest benefit to outsourcing your lead generation efforts is that it allows you to do what you do best, CLOSE! When the top of the funnel is buzzing it gives you the time you need to focus on the ones that will put money in your pocket.

Download our Lead Generation Best Practices Guide Now!

WANT TO KNOW THE BEST LEAD GENERATION TACTICS TO GROW YOUR ORGANIZATION?

Using our experience in lead generation, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 lead generation best practices you need to implement this year.

Simply fill out the form to the right to download your guide!

4 Ways to Use Facebook for B2B Lead Generation

Using digital marketing to generate B2B leads is something that your business simply cannot skip over if you want to grow. While Facebook might not be your first choice for B2B lead generation (we see you, LinkedIn!), there are on average 1.56 billion people that log into Facebook daily. So even if your target audience is off the clock when they see your ad, you can still reach them and pique their interest.

We use Facebook advertising internally as well as for clients and want you to have success with it too! In this blog post, we are going to go over some of our favorite ways to use Facebook for B2B lead generation.

Install the Facebook Pixel

Before you move any further into using Facebook for B2B marketing, you need to install the Facebook Pixel onto your website. This little piece of code is multi-purpose and will help improve the rest of the information we will go over in the blog post, from retargeting to tracking conversions.

Need more information on how to create and install the Facebook pixel? Facebook has a step-by-step guide for setting it up!

Remarket to Website Visitors Based on the Page They Visited

The beauty of the Facebook pixel is that it can track who visits your website and connect that information back to a Facebook account. Therefore, you can create an audience just of the people who have visited a specific page on your website (whether that be a “more info” or “thank you” page) and send specific Facebook ads on to keep them engaged.

Remember, it’s easier to convert a current customer or someone more familiar with your company/brand than it is to sell a cold prospect.

Lookalike Audience

Rather than marketing to those who have visited your website, the Lookalike Audience uses data on those website visitors and creates an entirely new audience of people in similar demographics, interests, etc.

While this audience likely hasn’t seen content from your business before, this targeting method helps you get in front of more people who may want or need your products or services and are more likely to convert than simply targeting a couple demographics on your own.

Create Facebook Ads for Mobile

When about 88% of Facebook users are accessing via mobile device, you can’t afford to not optimize for mobile.

So, what does “optimize creative for mobile” mean, anyway?

1. Image and video quality

   When creating content, think about how the image or video will show up on your phone or tablet. Square or vertical-sized (1:1 or 9:16 ratio) images will take up more of a user’s screen than a horizontal (16:9) image and will grab their attention better

   Related post: How to Increase Online Engagement with The Right Graphic

2. Image text size

   Since a phone or tablet is much smaller than a desktop, any text-overlay that you place on the images needs to be readable without needing to zoom in. If the post is organic, you can include as much text in the image as you want. If you’re using the image for an ad, then ensure that the text takes up less than 20% of the image (You can just the text size in the Facebook Creative Hub!)

What do you do after someone converts to a lead?

Woohoo! Someone clicked on your Facebook post and converted to a lead on your website! But… now what? The first thing we always suggest is to follow up quickly with the lead. If they signed up to receive a downloadable guide, ensure that they receive an email immediately. If they filled out a “Let’s Talk” form requesting more information, your sales team should be following this follow-up sequence.

Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy

Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.

Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.

In this download, you’ll receive:

• The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.

• 4 essential elements to add in every content piece.

• Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement

• Key strategies for lead generation