Accelerate Demand Using Rich Media

Accelerate Demand Using Rich Media:from Business 2 Community by Mani Iyer
Enterprise marketers today constantly seek new and creative ways to engage, qualify and convert prospects online. However, with so many competing distractions for users, this is harder than ever! As a marketer responsible for your demand funnel, you are also looking for new ways to get answers to what you don’t know about your prospects. Here are a few quick points to ponder:

• 100% of your prospects today remain unknown to you, outside of your website. What if you could identify prospects, at the account level, if not down to the individual, no matter where they are across the web?
• 80+% of your prospects in the typical B2B sales cycle will not even get to your website. They may, however interact with your brand, or learn about your business on 3rd party websites, community sites, blogs and social media. What if you could easily engage them, right where they are?
• 95+% of your prospects do not click through your emails to consume content on your landing pages. Email response rates continue to drop today. What if you had new ways that grab a user’s attention within email and get them to take action?
• 99.5% of your prospects do not click through your banner ads to come to your website. Display ads have traditionally under-performed other channels for generating top of funnel demand. It may be time to take another look at display.
• 90+% of your B2B marketer colleagues will tell you they are yet to generate leads from social media pages. What if you could generate leads directly off your Company’s Facebook page?

In comes rich media, which is the combination of text, visuals, and interactive web elements published online. Imagine rich media that is not just visually engaging, but can additionally capture prospect interaction data in real-time, back inside your MAP system. You can then use the captured insights to personalize follow-up interactions with the same prospects. Here are a few key ways on how to accelerate your demand using rich media:

Boost Top-of-Funnel Leads

Forget about redirecting prospects to a branded landing page.They would much rather stay where they are and will often lose interest if you attempt to send them to a completely different page or content experience. You can now take your marketing messages and landing page actions right to the prospect with in-banner lead forms. Embed in-banner lead forms into your display ads on high traffic content pages on your website, on third-party websites, social pages, and ad network placements such as the Google Display Network (GDN), to capture leads right where you engage prospects. You will find that it requires far fewer impressions per lead conversion, hence allowing you to double the leads from your existing media budget.
Expert Tip: Ask for the least amount of info possible (1-6 fields max) then try Data Append for additional data.

Increase Response Rates from Emails

A simple and effective way to take your marketing emails from passive to interactive is by embedding a short rich media poll or mini survey. By supplementing your primary call-to-actions in nurture emails with a rich media poll or survey, you can engage prospects and gather insights on their buying interests and intentions, or product and service needs. You can then capture these insights inside your MAP with the prospect’s contact record and help your sales team intelligently engage prospects during the sales process.

Expert tip: make sure you can easily re-deploy campaigns across all online channels (email, website, social, display, re-targeting, & mobile.)

Extend Nurture Programs across the Web

Traditionally, lead nurturing was limited to your website and MAP-delivered emails. However, it’s now possible to also deploy rich media campaigns with media placements on third party websites, partner sites or ad networks. This increases your prospect reach and significantly extends your lead scoring opportunities, all the while letting you capture all of this data into your MAP or CRM.

Expert tip: Secure new prospects by tapping into existing customers with tell-a-friend promotions and sweepstakes on social media and across the web.

Target individual buyers and named accounts with the right message

Displaying personalized and relevant information to prospects is an essential part of capturing their attention and accelerating your demand. The best way to do this is by designing campaigns that take into account prior prospect interaction history and profile data from your MAP. You can then apply a series of rules for serving targeted rich media content and ads, while delivering one-to-one relevance to each buyer or named account.

Tap mobile as a new demand channel

Use rich media polls and mini-surveys to engage mobile users inside mobile-delivered emails. Lead the users from the mobile email into the mobile browser to complete their rich media interaction experience. Gather prospect insights, and capture data inside your MAP. Run mobile campaigns with links to rich media in-banner lead forms.
Expert tip: Tailor your campaign for mobile: Use shorter, punchier text content, with links to content.
We wish you great success applying these tactics using rich media and driving more top of funnel leads to fill your demand funnel. By applying these innovations, your marketing programs will drive significant new sales and revenues for your business.