One way to look at the subject of today’s lead generation market is that it is akin to the Age of Exploration. With the rise of internet marketing, businesses of all sorts are looking to stake territorial claims over the still unexplored territories of the online world. It can even be argued that tech companies like CRM software vendors are the ones leading this charge with their lead generation campaigns.
Qualifying software leads means understanding a prospect. Oftentimes it leads to a talk of great misunderstanding most people have about what they really do. For business and enterprise leaders, there is definitely too much generalizing going on. Getting software leads for enterprise solutions means doing the exact opposite of what is going on.
On Search Engine Watch, blogger Alex Cohen wrote an article listing five ways to boost conversions for B2B marketing. You can read all 5 methods here but what’s interesting to note is the very first method he mentions: ask for less.
“The least you can ask for is time, usually to read a blog post or article. From there everything you ask for has to have an increasing amount of value to the reader.
Want an email address, name, and phone number? You better be giving away a great e-book or webinar.
Want a credit card, even if it won’t be charged? Your trial better be worth it.
The more you want, the more you have to offer. Create multiple ways into your brand all the way from free to paid customer.”
Why this is interesting is because another B2B marketing blogger (G. David Dodd) has also written something that’s connected to the subject of asking more from a potential B2B customer. In this blog post, he talks about a three-part series on the Harvard Business Review which discuss misconceptions marketers are having about consumers. Dodd however writes about seeing this from the B2B perspective:
“For me, the most significant finding in the CEB survey is that consumers are overwhelmed by the volume of information they’re exposed to and the choices they’re presented with, and as a result, many are making purchase decisions differently than in the past. The authors of these blog posts refer to this condition as ‘cognitive overload.’”
So what points do these two bloggers have in common? Well, when both their insights are put together, one can conclude that marketing not only demands more effort on your part but you should also make sure that effort reduces any effort on the part of your prospects! As Cohen says, if you want something from your target decision makers, then you need to give them more value for it. Part of that value comes from not asking too much.
Cognitive overload is the result of asking too much. It exhausts the prospect by giving too much information and too many options to digest. How else can you explain the fact that, despite how well-written and detailed your marketing website describes your software, you barely convert enough visitors? That’s because no matter how hard you put effort into creating content, that effort only raises the effort your prospects must exert to understand and appreciate it.
Simply put, if you’ve asked for their time then you need to make sure they don’t exhaust themselves in giving it to you. For example, if you’re using B2B telemarketing to promote your enterprise software solution, don’t overload your prospects with too much information and technical jargon. It will just make it harder for them to make a decision. Keep the call simple and quick.
Exert more effort only when the prospect specifically consents to it and still isn’t straining themselves afterwards. The negative effects of marketing no-nos such as information overload and dry content are usually the result of exerting too much effort only to result in the target market exerting the same amount of effort just to comprehend. As a matter of fact, Cohen’s article describes how a conversion is the result of a relationship. A part of that relationship is proper give-and-take. Carefully nurture a prospect by sharing information only when they can take it. That’s something you should put more effort into while asking for less effort from prospects.
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