Conversion & Social Media Trends in B2B - Part I
I watched a WhichTestWon.com webinar recently called “Conversion & Social Media Trends” that contained useful information for anyone in B2B marketing. The webinar, presented by Bryan Eisenberg, proposed that it’s keeping up with your 
customers – not beating the competition – that is most important. He discussed different ways to create a culture that can achieve this, and I’d like to comment on a few things of importance.
Today’s customers are changing. Rather than just sitting passively in front of the tube, they are proactively communicating and interacting across various channels. In order to respond, businesses have to be nimble and able to respond quickly – regardless of which channel their customers utilize.
Eisenberg gave some great tips on how to test your company’s agility, such as the following lead generation test:
Have 10 mystery shoppers to fill out lead forms.
Step 1: How long until they get a “real response” (not automated)
Step 2: How long did it take to get an estimate/price?
Step 3:Split the 10 into 3 groups. Have them contact Customer Service through different channels (Twitter, phone, email). How long until they get resolution? How did it go? Were there breakdowns in any one channel over another? Were there any breakdowns in general? Did each channel respond equally? How can you improve? How did you compare to your competitors?
In addition to his test examples, Eisenberg also recommended coming up with your own creative testing based on your personal organization. Develop hypotheses based on what you want to be and what you think will get you there, then develop experiments to test your hypotheses. Remember to constantly test yourself, because the goal is to never stop learning.
Eisenberg concluded the webinar by discussing the Five-Star Culture Traits that can help a business be more agile, respond to better to its customers, improve customer satisfaction and foster (and remain!) a learning culture. These five traits include being:
- Customer intimate (by knowing your customers)
- Remarkable (by offering a remarkable and positive experience)
- Authentic (by being open and honest)
- Nimble (so you can respond effectively)
- And always be Testing & Tweaking
Leads lose the majority of their effectiveness within the first hour of neglect, so having a culture that tends to them is of the utmost importance. And though Eisenberg gave great advice, don’t hesitate to develop and test your own hypotheses. Always be testing and learning, because that’s the only way to keep up with a constantly changing society – and constantly changing customers, as well.
Vann M
orris is the director of buying behavior studies with the Atlant a B2B advertising agency, MLT Creative. She is a Social and Behavioral Scientist who is currently working on her PhD in Communications, and uses her strong theoretical background in order to show how scientific theory should be used to develop strategy and effective B2B marketing campaigns.
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