Turn Prospects into Influencers and Advocates

Quality marketing content turns readers into prospects and prospects into leads. Sometimes, those leads aren’t the people making a direct buying decision.

In B2B marketing, being separated from the final decision makers by intermediaries is a common experience. But, getting to them may not be as difficult as you think. Rather than despair that you can’t reach the decision makers, why not…

• better analyze your leadership-level persona to market to them more effectively, or
• take advantage of the audience you are reaching and empower them as appreciated influencers in your sales process?

At Kayak, we’ve crafted marketing personas that are focused descriptions of each typical client type we encounter. One of these personas is a Marketing Manager or Marketing Coordinator. Typically, this person reports to an executive team. While these people are not usually making buying decisions, you can bet they are influencing them. When that happens, they can become one of our best advocates.

Empower Your Prospects

Give the right information at the right time. Transparency is a new part of doing business, and businesses embracing it are seeing positive effects. Whether it’s detailing your process and priorities, openly discussing your sales numbers, or opening your API to developers – businesses marketing transparently online earn attention and trust with that information.

How much information you share is up to you, of course. But remember that keeping your prospects in the dark, especially when they are not a decision maker, leaves them unprepared or uninformed when presenting your solutions to their leadership team.

Turn the Influencers into Advocates

Your content should make a positive impression and be helpful to your prospects at the start. A prospect who educates themselves with your content is more likely to approach you prepared to work with you. Send influencers into presentations and meeting rooms with informative and engaging materials about your solutions, and they’ll look like heros.

Support Advocates like you Support Sales

Modern online marketing is all about bringing sales and marketing into the same room – for less competition and more collaboration. Marketing has the power to empower sales, and a good content marketing practice should make the sales process smoother by educating the prospect and moving them deep into the buying process before needing to come into contact with sales.

When you are working with an influencer to prepare them for a discussion with their decision maker, thjink like a coach. Make them an honorary member of your sales team and support them. If they’re choosing you, make a commitment to them in the sales process. Prepare, prepare, prepare your prospects.

Instead of seeing the prospect who can’t make decisions as a weakness, grab the opportunity to have an advocate inside your potential new client’s office.

Randy’s Post on LinkedIn Pulse

Before you go wondering what you might’ve picked up from my website, don’t worry – I’m not that kind of hacker. What I might be, though, is a growth hacker, someone who has figured out a few “hacks” that allow me to do more with less.

Unless this is the first article you’ve read on the Internet lately, you probably already know that so-called hacks are everywhere. In the digital age of information sharing, it’s only natural that people want to discover what others are doing to make their lives (or jobs) easier and fuller. That, in turn, has led to the growth of quick tips people can use to solve the most common challenges…

Read the full article on LinkedIn Pulse