Peer research is a much overlooked resource for B2B marketers, but it’s actually one of the most helpful methods of teasing out buyers pain points. For example, on average, prospects receive over 3 invitations per day to attend webinars, download case studies or read the latest white paper. How do you cut through all that noise? Over 70% of B2B marketers self-report that they don’t have a great answer. How’d we know that? We asked them! That’s the beauty of survey based lead generation. Polling your prospects to learn more about them fuels both immediate lead flow and hyper relevant content. You might have read our last blog, Enabling Continuous Customer Engagement, where we discussed that today’s marketer’s opportunity is to create an ongoing dialogue with their prospects and customers. That’s great, but how do you create content that is engaging and targeted enough to fuel this dialogue?
Survey Based Lead Generation
Brands like DiscoverOrg leverage Survey Based Lead Generation programs to:
- Overcome the hardest part of the sales process: making initial contact
- Open doors and begin the dialogue with their prospects
- Develop a “needs profile” for their target accounts.
- Create a foundation for tailoring their pitch and outbound messaging.
The results are immediate:
Survey respondents are, by definition, qualified leads as they were handpicked to participate and provide the information that you wanted to capture. And what’s even more interesting is that peer based research drives a 36% higher engagement rate vs “traditional” content. Why? Consider your personal interest level in reading a whitepaper or attending a webinar that features insights from people just like you. It’s much harder to resist learning more about your industry, role and related opportunities from fellow business owners who know your difficulties and form a benchmark for your success. And once you’ve created the survey, the resulting data is owned by you. You now have a unique perspective on the industry to share with your prospects and customers. Consider all of the campaign possibilities: social teasers, webinars, infographics, eBooks and in-person thought leadership spots. When it comes to sharing and promoting your content, survey data gives you another edge: industry influencers crave original source content and perspectives to share with their followers, and guess what, your survey data is just what they are looking for.
If you’re a current Pardot customer, you can learn more about leveraging peer research and survey data in our Office Hours webinar on December 13.
