Menu

Tag: b2b marketing agency

Why You Should Consider a Virtual Outsourced Agency for Your Marketing Needs?

Posted on October 6, 2023 - 2:09 PM by
Contract Marketing Services in Chicago

Forrester Data indicates that B2B organizations “have really expanded their in-house agency, their centers of excellence, but that trend has really peaked in 2020.”

Reason? In times of downturn, companies are finding it hard to justify the costs of maintaining large, in-house marketing teams.

Downturn or not, experienced and vetted outsourced agencies are an excellent option for companies looking to step up their revenue and build a better-known brand. In the aftermath of COVID, where work-from-home has become more acceptable, there has been a rise of outsourced ‘virtual’ agency, which offers additional benefits when compared to a traditional outsourced marketing agencies.

What is an Outsourced ‘Virtual’ Agency and Why It Works so Well for B2B & Other Clients?

An outsourced, virtual agency is boutique agency comprised of partnered professionals and full-time staff. This means full engagement from experienced team members which continues beyond initial few months of the project. Unlike traditional, brick-and-mortar marketing agencies, our partners and employees work from their own spaces. And unlike many big name agencies, we do not hand-off work to juniors and are fully accountable to our clients’ needs at all times.

Looking for an analogy? At Webtage, we consider ourselves a digital version of George Cloney’s ‘Ocean Eleven.’ Instead of specialist conmen, we are a group of specialist digital experts who are on top of their game.

What does this mean to you, the client?

Stable network – Unlike agencies with high turnovers and high costs, a virtual agency works lean and works well because we have a shared work history, deep trust, and common work ethic that enables us to regularly & successfully work together. Many of us work full time on your marketing campaigns, while “our partners” join us for specific project needs.

For instance, you may need a specialized motion graphic production team for an sales-enablement video. We’ve got you covered with our partners. Need a ad strategist who specializes in Demand Side Platforms (DSPs)? We’ve got you covered as well!

Whether your outsources team consists of our employees or partners, you can always be assured of professional work process, non-disclosures, timely deliverables, and world-class services.

Highly vetted & Highly Experienced – Our network consists of experienced and highly specialized experts and you never have to worry about your project being handed  over to a junior staff at a traditional agency.

We have a very rigorous process of vetting our partners and employees. Just like you have full control over your recruitment process and do your due diligence, so do we.

Our global team is comprised of creative, fun, passionate, and analytical minds and we love the work that we do. Our work is world-class, out of the box, and has always succeeded in moving the business needle. Along the way, we’ve won the admiration of our industry peers and deep appreciation from our clients.

Amongst the adjectives our clients and partners have used for us: professional, prompt, effective, polished, delightful, patient, gracious, skills nonpareil, amazing, dedicated, sharp, attentive, responsive, knowledgeable, the best and we could go on but here is the more important part. We have more years of combined work experience than we would like to acknowledge, lest we feel ancient!

A globally distributed team with deep agency experience and a keen ability to assess business situations and create out-of-the-box hooks to capture the imagination of the audience, you can be assured that only the very experienced and brilliant minds will work on your projects. We work lean and work passionately.

Flexible and scalable – Our extended network of fraternity members allows us the ability to scale up and down.

During downturns, we can scale back our operations to support your operational continuity. We also switch from a retainer model to a project or hour-based invoicing, if a situation so demands.

Cost Savings – here’s our value proposition: for the cost of one full-time employee (FTE), you have the skills and services of an entire marketing team working for you!

How do we do this?

  • Well, to begin with, we work lean. We work out of our own spaces, eliminating the real-estate and utilities costs associated with having a physical location.
  • We also rely on cost-differentials between different teams spread across the globe. That being said, we always are fair to the expectations of our employees and partners. We are a highly ethical and empathetic organization and we believe in a win-win situation.
  • Finally, we distribute our time between multiple clients, while compromising on none. This means, we work hard and we deliver, every single time.

Long-term Revenue Growth – We analyze marketing strategies, marketing operations, and marketing returns through the lens of revenue generation.

Due to our lean process, lean pricing structure, smart strategies, impeccable execution and tight project management, we are consistenly able to bring multi-fold returns on marketing investment. We love to show the results via our clean and interactive marketing dashboards as well as deeper insights by providing lead intelligence and lead reports.

So How Do We Keep Up With Our Clients’ Internal Teams & Develop a Nuanced Marketing Strategy?

We understand that clients may have a sense of unease about bringing in an outside team to manage their marketing efforts. However, we have perfected a process that allows us to become an integral part of your organization. This process involves:

    1. DISCOVERY SESSION

      This is where we define your marketing objectives (i.e., establish thought leadership, increase prospect database, raise awareness about a particular solution, promote an event etc), identify buyer personas (what are their needs and motivations) and buyer journeys.  This helps us craft a strategy that is closely aligned with your business needs, your competitive market and buyer persona.

    2. SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE EXTRACTION

      We follow a knowledge extraction process where we interview Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on a regular basis, identify influencers, study hashtags and develop fluency in topics of interest, conversation nuances, industry jargon, as well as gaps in conversation.

      And we do this through weekly, bi-monthly or monthly meetings. We also work closely with our clients’ sales team to ensure there is common ground and mutual understanding between marketing & sales.

    3. INVENTORY & AUDIT

      We perform a quantitative and qualitative assessment of your existing marketing campaigns, content pieces & collateral that you already own. We evaluate the current state of affairs, returns on investment and compare it to your business goals. How are the campaigns performing? Are they generating engagement and conversions? We conduct trend analysis of assets that are performing well & poorly.

      This process allows to work in a contextualized space.

    4. GAP ANALYSIS & CONTENT STRATEGY

      Based on the discovery, knowledge extraction, and audits, we create a core strategy that will be the grounding point that all stakeholders will agree upon. Then we will create hooks and themes, followed by a marketing plan mapped to objectives and buyer’s journey.

    5. CRAFT & MARKET

      Here is where we craft your content, marketing collateral and your campaigns, lending to them the levers required to strike a chord with your audience, build your thought leadership, and compel them to engage with your brand.

    6. REGULAR CHECK-INS –

We practice a well-thought out, modular process that helps you get the maximum returns on your investment. There is always scope to omit certain areas if you already developed those in-house. Conversely, we may want to dive deeper in certain other areas, if that’s seen necessary by all stakeholders.

Regular check-ins via regularly scheduled virtual meetings, email and phone conversations always keep us looped in and available for our clients’ needs.

Still on the Fence?

See many of Webtage’s outsourced web technologies & marketing success stories here. Read our testimonials, see the awards we have won, and see the industries we service.

Our digital build & market experience spans multiple industries, but our strongest strengths are B2B/technology, education, healthcare, B2C, and professional services. Our clients achieve sustained visibility because we conduct online campaigns the solid way. We are here to build a relationship with your business and work with you as your creative, marketing & technology partner.

Digital Marketing Agency in Naperville

Does Content Gating Still Work for B2B Lead Generation in 2023?

Posted on January 20, 2023 - 4:03 AM by
b2b lead generation

In the ever-evolving world of B2B lead generation, marketers are always looking for the best strategies to capture qualified leads. One of the most popular strategies is content gating, which involves requiring visitors to fill out a form in order to access a piece of content. 

White papers, e-Books, and other long-form content pieces have been popular lead-generation tools for B2B marketing agencies for many years. But with the plethora of gated content, it has become increasingly difficult to stand out and make an impact with gated content.

The question is: in 2023, are white papers and other long-form content pieces as lead generators dead? The answer is not entirely straightforward. 

While it’s true that gated content pieces are no longer as effective as they used to be, the creation of high-quality, premium content should still remain an important part of any B2B company’s lead generation strategy. High-quality content can and should be used to provide valuable insights into a product or service and help build trust with potential customers. 

In addition, the gating of the content may need to be done in more creative ways and possibly further down the buyer’s journey to better qualify the user’s purchase intent.

Should Content be Gated or Ungated?

Generating qualified leads is a key part of any successful B2B marketing strategy. Both gated and ungated long-form content, such as whitepapers, can be used for different purposes in the marketing process and in the buyer’s journey. 

While gated whitepapers have traditionally been used as a lead qualifier and lead contact information generator, the average landing page conversion rate is only 2.35%. This means that 97.65% of your landing page traffic leaves the page without ever engaging with your content or with your brand, leaving a tremendous opportunity to cultivate that initial interest.

One effective way to engage your audience is by “ungating” the content, which allows potential customers to access your content without having to provide any personal information. This approach helps to build trust and relationships with prospects, while also providing valuable insights into their interests and preferences.

Setting your whitepaper free, i.e., ungated and free to download without a form gate, is a perfect strategy to follow when you are seeking to build brand awareness in the industry. Allowing free access builds goodwill while promoting your brand as a knowledge source and a thought leader. 

This does not mean that ungated content cannot be used for lead-generation purposes. This also does not mean that the gating of white papers and other content pieces is dead.

How you can use Ungated Content for Lead Generation

Ungated content can be used in conjunction with other lead-generation tactics such as SEO, retargeting, lead nurturing, and marketing automation. 

Bottom line – create content that is useful for and resonates with your target audience. 

If you produce high-quality, premium content, even if you “ungate” the content,  you can nurture leads through the sales funnel and generate more qualified leads for your business.

  • Search Engine Optimization Wins – Ungated content, when optimized for search engine optimization purposes, can be indexed by search engines and give you high visibility on search engines. 

Gated content, by virtue of not being visible to the public and search engine bots, cannot be indexed for search visibility.

So if you are still building your SEO profile and your credibility in your audiences’ minds, ungated content may be your best friend.

  • Retargeting Ads & Remarketing Campaigns – Just because you allow ungated access to your premium content does not mean you have lost all lead-generation opportunities. 

Enable cookies on your site and create retargeting audiences for your email, paid, organic, and social media visitors. Segment the audiences by their level of engagement with the ungated content that you provided for free. 

Re-engage with the audience through paid ads (retargeting) and email drip campaigns (remarketing). 

Use gated content once your audience is further down the funnel as your target audience is better acquainted with your brand and is more likely to share their contact information with you at that point. 

Retargeting and remarketing campaigns also help keep your brand top of mind as your audience. 

  • A Larger Audience Reach – Ungated content creates a much bigger audience for your content and is also more likely to be shared within their individual networks. As marketers, you can still keep track of the consumption of your content, which in itself is a micro-conversion. As your target audience consumes more and more quality content from you, you build top-of-mind awareness for your brand, and that in turn, is likely to generate more inquiries from your audience when they have the intent to purchase.
  • Direct Sharing with Your Most Valuable Audience – Finally, use automation tools on LinkedIn to share your most valuable content. In fact, go even further and share it with your targeted list of accounts. That way, you are using a valuable, usable, and relevant piece of content as a conversation starter rather than a cold prospecting message.  

When & How You Should Gate Your Content

Despite the low conversion rates of gated content and the ways in which ungated long-form content, such as whitepapers, can be used in more creative ways for lead generation, gated white papers are one of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies. 

By gating content, businesses can capture qualified leads that are generally genuinely interested in their products or services. This is an important step in the lead nurturing process and helps companies to identify potential customers who have a higher likelihood of making a purchase.

Gating white papers also help companies to track leads more effectively and set up the foundations for marketing automation. Through this process, businesses can target and segment leads based on their interests and preferences. This way, they can ensure that their marketing messages are reaching the right people at the right time.

So when should you gate your white papers or other long-form premium content?

According to a survey conducted by Referral Rock, 59% of the surveyed marketers said they are most likely to gate a piece of content when it is more in-depth than a typical content piece they produce. 50% of those surveyed also said they gate content to qualify a lead as genuinely interested.

In our experience, here are the best practices for gating and promoting content:

1. Provide a solution to a specific and urgent problem – Unless a piece of content is seen as really valuable by your prospects, they are hesitant to share their contact information, even if you have spent hundreds of research hours and content creation time to create perfect, in-depth content.

Make sure your content piece is specific enough to help the reader find solutions to an urgent problem. Remember painkillers sell better than vitamins!

2. Use titles and keywords that actually speak to your audience – Sometimes, there are various ways to speak to a problem in the industry and not everyone may be using the same terminology to speak about the same issue.

Make sure you spend enough time researching keyword search volume, hashtags, and buzzwords being used in the industry to really match your content piece to user queries.

3. Provide content that they cannot otherwise find online –  Examples of content types that work well behind a form include information that is not easily available online, such as proprietary industry reports, toolkits to help with a specific problem area, product demos, white papers (as long as it meets criteria 1, 2 & 3), data sheets, webinars on new technologies or topics, how-to guides, templates for downloads, etc.

4. Ensure Gated Form Best Practices to minimize the chances of getting spammed. If the contact information that is shared is not genuine or linked to a business, it can dilute the lead qualification process. 

Best practices include emailing the content to the email address shared instead of allowing for a direct download and requiring a business email address instead of a generic one. There is also some evidence that progressive profiling improves conversion rates by reducing user friction.

5. Acknowledge that not all downloads have the intent to purchase – Sometimes readers may be top of the funnel and may only be looking for educational material to improve their understanding of the subject, i.e., not likely to become an SQL anytime in the near future. 

We are all guilty of this. We are looking for information for educational purposes and have no intention of reaching out to the company that authored the content for any commercial purposes.

6. Gate content lowers down in the funnel. At the top of the funnel, many prospects are still learning and exploring and are more likely to want to stay anonymous. By gating content in the middle of the funnel, marketers can ensure that they are getting leads who have already shown interest in their product or service and are more likely to convert. 

This strategy is perfectly aligned with the idea of ungating your premium content and then targeting the viewers with retargeting ads and/or remarketing drip campaigns. They are more likely to share their information once they are in the consideration or decision phase.

What does this mean for B2B lead generation?

Content still reigns supreme. Great content that helps your users with a specific pain point will always work in generating leads with the right amount of marketing. The point is that not all high-quality, premium content needs to be gated. In fact, if you are still building brand awareness, it may be best for you to make your content pieces, even the more in-depth ones, free for all.

However, if you really have something unique that’s not available online, your gating strategy may work really well in generating leads provided you promote the piece of content well. 

In 2023, with form fatigue building up, introduce other lead generation strategies into your mix, especially retargeting strategies, automated and personalized chatbots, and gating your content lower in your funnel to truly deliver leads that have a high intent to purchase.

B2B Lead Generation Services in Chicago