Learning this new Art and Science: How to Sell without Selling.
Modern Marketers were really thriving at our How to do Modern Marketing in 2020 workshop in Singapore on 11th October 2019! We brought together fellow marketers for the perfect B2B Marketing workshop for the Modern Business, and it was so good to see a full house with familiar and new faces! It is heartening to see attendance increasing each year and having more and more people getting their hands into exploring Modern Marketing!
There were great insights on how to start with the "Why" in our business before thinking about "What" and "How" and how modern marketing is essential to attract, convert and delight your customers!
Veronica Lind, our Business and Marketing Strategist, and Joh-Ju Koh our Communications Strategist teamed up with a special guest, Hubspot Singapore's Channel Consultant, Chiara Gaviraghi to conduct this two-hour lunch-and-learn workshop. Chiara specialises in helping Digital Marketing agencies in Asia Pacific grow and scale by applying inbound marketing. At the workshop, Chiara also introduced a special guest, our very own bot, Mindy! Participants got to see how Mindy helps Vermilion Pinstripes in her role in Modern Marketing.
The workshop began with the participants articulating WHY they are in business - the purpose of their business and the value they bring to their customers. It is important that participants understand this in order to attract the right audience who aligns to their purpose and be able to differentiate themselves from competition.
The purpose of Vermilion Pinstripes is to build clients' business confidence so that they can sell without selling using Modern Marketing techniques.
Many wanted to know what motivates customers to make their decisions and how to create content and offers for customers at the right time. Others were keen to know how to raise their brand profile. Improving traffic proved to be a challenge for some businesses and several shared their experiences with generating leads and closing sales, through exercises.
One of the key challenges for modern marketers is how B2B customers' buying behaviours are changing so quickly with the times. With the explosion of knowledge in cyberspace, buyers have very convenient 24/7 access to a variety of information and purchasing channels. While this empowers buyers, it also means businesses have to work intelligently to sell more without selling, or risk drowning under all the information that is out there. Especially for new businesses or small ones, marketing in our era can feel rather overwhelming simply because there is too much out there and one does not know where to start or how to sift what is important.
During the workshop, we got our participants sharing and coming up with enthusiastic responses to what they thought were the Top 5 Best Practices in Modern Marketing. Put on your thinking hats and go into Modern Marketing Mode. How can you apply these Best Practices in your business?
Generating Leads in the new digital era
How are your B2B marketing and communications generating leads? Here's a simple question to ask yourself. Are you news worthy or ad worthy? Is what you are offering of substance, of value, of interest? Modern buyers are intelligent, so it is important to balance the aesthetics with the substance.
Chiara showed how HubSpot CRM and marketing automation software work to attract, engage and convert customers. We also had a chance to chat with our bot, Mindy online!
Leverage your Blog to increase engagements
Don't shy away from blogs. You don't have to be Shakespeare to come up with blogs that are excellent at increasing traffic. This can be a powerful way to grow your brand reputation. Share your knowledge, get customers hooked and interested to learn with you and keep them coming back to you for more.
When they trust what you say, your reputation soars.
Follow the CAT to serve Content to the Right Audience at the Right Time
We discussed how you can share content to the right audience at the right time by following the CAT (content, audience and time). Social media and email campaigns are rich sources of engagements. We get a lot out of our workshops when participants share their experiences of how they said the right things or provide the right offers to the right customers at the right time, all via social media and email campaigns. There is a time and place for everything. Know which customers you are targeting to know what they want to hear. While there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, there are optimum times and days when customers are most receptive and on their devices to receive information.
Participants worked on content that will
- Disrupt
- Dominate the conversation
- Create a following
- Give joy
- Trigger a desire for MORE
We also discussed how we can personalise the customer and brand experience.
Ad Campaigns
Some might groan at this, but it is really fun when you know how to make it work for you. Brainstorm with your team and look at ad campaigns around you that have been successful and analyse why. How can you use them to build trust and boost engagement with your customers? We also showed how you can create, track and manage Facebook and Google Ads with HubSpot.
Build Customer Relationships
There are ways to close more deals without in-your-face selling. It is worth investing time and effort to build up excellent customer relationship management with the help of tools like HubSpot. Understand your customers´ psyche, needs, desires, lack and problems. Provide them with what they do not have and what they need. Know what makes them tick and what values they stand by. Most importantly, remember these are humans you are dealing with. Not a bunch of mindless numbers.
Modern Marketing can turn 60 to 90 per cent of your sales processes into a marketing engine, depending on your business type. Dashboards and reports help companies understand their pipeline and sales position. We certainly do not want sales people to waste time churning unnecessary reports. We want them to focus on what they do best - deepening relationships and closing sales.
Keep Thriving
What drives us in our work at Vermilion Pinstripes is helping businesses work with simple tools and watching how they enjoy the process as they begin to see results and positive changes. This is how businesses begin to thrive and enjoy selling.
At the end of the day, we all share a common aim as Modern Marketers. We want the best marketing practices to attract, engage, close and delight our customers. Instead of groping blindly and taking a shot in the dark, we have very specific tools and steps we can take to propel our businesses to thrive, and do so happily.
We are not that far to welcoming 2020, so if thriving in Modern Marketing is one of your goals for the coming year, don't miss our THRIVE Melbourne 2020 that can guide you to attract, convert and delight B2B customers in the new era!
