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Video conferencing solutions have been front and center during the COVID-19 pandemic. These tools have helped us work, learn, and play. And as telemedicine has become more of a necessity, video conferencing capabilities are keeping us healthy.
All of this is helping an industry that was already growing—a $6.1 billion valuation that was expected to nearly double in the coming years—to grow even faster. And this isn’t an acceleration that will be temporary. Employees aren’t going to let businesses return to their old ways once they’ve had a taste of remote work. People aren’t going to be in any hurry to return to a doctor’s office and unpredictable waits in the waiting room.
The Challenges of Marketing Video Conferencing Solutions
As a business in the video conferencing industry, you want to capture your share of this expanding market. But even with the opportunity here, you can’t just put out a few ads and expect to grow your market share.
You need a targeted marketing plan to establish your company as an authority in the industry. As an authority, you’ll gain your customers’ trust, differentiate yourself from the competition, and your marketing efforts will be more effective. A targeted marketing plan requires you to know the answers to these three questions.
- Who is your buyer?
A successful marketing plan begins with identifying who your buyers are. Knowing this information will shape the rest of your marketing strategy, helping you decide where to spend your time and efforts.
Identifying the type of person who buys your product and details about them—like the size of their company, what industry are they in, what their goals are, why they want to buy your product, and how they’ll use it—will help you build a buyer persona.
How do you find this information out about your customers? It’s simple: Ask them.
Yes, your sales team will have insights into your customers, and those insights give you a place to start building out personas. But the more specific you can get the more valuable these personas will be, so they should be based predominantly off conversations with recent wins and losses from your CRM.
Ask about your customers’ pain points to identify what challenges they’re they facing. Ask what they want your product to solve. Find out what the barriers are to purchasing, such as the price or complexity of the video conferencing solutions.
Finally, ask about their buying process. How did they learn about your product, why did they consider buying it, how did they evaluate it, how did they arrive at their final decision, and who is the final decision maker?
All of this buyer information will help you target your marketing message.
- What is your message?
Having a consistent message that you leverage through all of your marketing channels will help you build trust with prospective customers. Your message should remain the same no matter where it appears, including your digital marketing, email, content marketing, social media, and ads.
You also want your message to stand out in the marketplace, especially when that marketplace is as crowded as video conferencing. This is why buyer personas are such an important foundation. They tell you the things that make you different and what kind of messages your buyers want to hear. For some companies their service really is something that makes them stand out. For others, it’s their innovation that makes them different.
When you use your buyer personas to build messaging, you can create brand-specific messaging that allows you to stand out in the crowd as opposed to continuing to parrot the same things the rest of the video conferencing industry is saying.
- What’s your inbound marketing strategy?
As your marketing efforts attract leads, you want to have a way to nurture those leads and move them down the sales funnel. This requires an inbound marketing strategy. Your sales funnel will have different sections—at least three. But, overall, the goal is to attract, engage, and delight customers by providing value and building trust.
To attract, use SEO and targeted keywords in your content, in social media posts, and on your website. As users search for particular terms, your content will show up in search engine results.
To engage, communicate with leads using targeted email messages, workflows, and ads for your specific audience. Include valuable information that will make customers want to build a relationship with you.
To delight, you’ll follow up with customers after their purchase using emails, chatbots, and targeted content. This helps keep customers feeling supported, happy, and satisfied, even after they’ve bought your product.
Enhancing the Sales Cycle
Sales cycles in B2B technology aren’t short, and video conferencing solutions are no exceptions. Effective marketing isn’t going to necessarily shorten those significantly, but it will help remove friction from the buying process. Establishing authority in the marketplace and helps familiarize your customer with your company and your product. By the time customers actually talk to you, they know who you are and it makes those conversations more productive, making the overall buying process easier on both the buyer and on you.
eBook: How Team Collaboration Software Providers Can Build Trust with Their Customers
Your customers that invest in collaboration tools don’t miss a beat as the world evolves. They have tools that streamline communication and collaboration in the office.
So how do you engage with the companies who aren't as prepared for the virtual shift?
We love helping mid-market B2B tech companies like yours grow with purpose. If you are wanting to turn this moment into momentum, let us tell you how we can help.
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