2 min read  | B2B Marketing

What marketers are learning about #lockdown B2B marketing?

There’s nothing like a lockdown to force change and rethink how we can engage better with existing and new customers.

All in isolation

Lockdown gave us a chance to reconnect with people – far and wide and most importantly listen to what’s on marketer’s minds – as they navigate home-schooling, social bubbles, over-eating and long hair. And what a story the past seven weeks have been!

Thankfully, very soon the kids will be back at school and life can return to semi-normal for all the frazzled full-timers juggling Netflix and notepads. It remains however, that when it comes to B2B marketing and selling, life as we know it, won’t return to normal – or at very least, not for some time yet.

Fortunately, we live in a time where the technology to help us interact with customers is readily available. For many of our customers, Business As Usual operates at the forefront of technology – where designing, planning and producing digital programs, with larger scale events, combining both the physical attendee and the digital attendee watching via live-stream – has been a day at the office - long before it became the 'go-to option'.

Socially Distanced B2B Marketing

In the past, virtual events like webinars and other digital interactions were often planned to supplement face-to-face experiences. This has essentially been flipped on its head – meaning virtual is now the go-to option – with face to face being the supplement that will kick-in at some future stage.

But how do you make your live or on-demand webinar as meaningful and relevant as face-to-face interaction? Simply put, setting up a few video calls or running traditional one-way webinar with Q&A doesn’t deliver enough interactivity and useful data to better serve those who are in attendance – your current and future customer.

Insight versus Opinion

With this in mind, we’ve put our hubspot marketing automation knowledge to work, together with our live and broadcast event expertise, and developed packages of interactive virtual event solutions. Based on the testing done so far our customers have seen;

  • Higher registration numbers
  • Higher attendance rates
  • Lower drop-out rates
  • Higher engagement in live Q+A, poll submissions
  • Better feedback and insights collected. 

All of which help sales people progress conversations and/or upsell and additionally provide marketers with better lead qualification. I.e. contacts who want to be nurtured

Just like all digital tactics, where you want to test, pilot and prove – if you can’t capture data on how your content and delivery resonates, you can’t guarantee those in attendance will continue to invest a) their time, and b) their attention, towards your thought leadership activities.

Finding opportunity in adversity

What’s been inspiring is to be able to put together a way to research better ways to collect useful marketing data and work with clients to put together solutions that helps them run seamless, compelling, personalised virtual events. With the first few of these new fully virtual products now under our belt, we're more convinced of their value than ever. Nothing will ever be as good as face-to-face interaction, but we think we're as close as possible.

Don't hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss how we can help you pivot to virtual events to achieve your marketing goals in the new normal.