AMA: Addigy Director | Head of Marketing, Laura Lewis on Channel Mix

There are so many review platforms out there: G2, SoftwareAdvice, Gartner Peer Insights, TrustRadius, and more. B2B Marketers should ensure that profiles are created on the platforms that reach their target markets (for example, if your product is not software, then SoftwareAdvice is likely not a good fit). Creation of these profiles and including links back to your website as well as buying information will help boost your domain authority and provide potential buyers with information if they land there. B2B Marketers should also think about how they want to run their review-collection program. The ideal situation is to launch it once and not worry about it anymore, rather than having to think about it, put it together, and launch is on a regular basis. Marketers can do this by creating segments of customers and building touchpoints into the customer journey of those customers asking for a review: these could be in welcome emails, onboarding emails, regular customer newsletters, in the support ticket area of the website, in email signatures of the customer success team, or in the product itself. Ultimately, think about the journey your customer takes, and where in that journey is the right time and place to ask for a review. Then build a sustainable program that can run without your interference, to the sites that are most relevant for your organization.

By it's very nature, a Product-Led approach usually focuses on offering a free trial of a product that is relatively inexpensive. It focuses on volume and digital interactions - and marketing should be sourcing the majority of revenue for the company. This means higher marketing budgets, more marketing staff, and a lower number of sales reps. The term "Product-Led" is really a misnomer, because marketing is a key piece of the equation to drive folks in. The free trial itself needs to offer an excellent experience - but marketing also needs to be engaging with prospects every single step of the way before, during, and after their trial. What does that mean for marketing? It means: * Robust advertising and content - brand awareness is critical. If people don't know about your product, they can't try it. Find websites that your audience frequents and partner with them for content and display programs. * Robust email programs - Have nurture cadences ready as soon as someone clicks that free trial button. These can be helpful tips during the trial, next steps after the trial, onboarding tips once someone purchases, content and education while they are a customer, and renewal reminders when contracts are coming up on their expiration dates. * In-product tutorials - Don't overlook your ability to use the product itself to market. Build in-app tutorials to make people have more successful trials. Promote upcoming webinars or new releases with a pop-up or banner in the product itself.

This is a loaded question! There is no one right answer. Different channels will work for different organizations based on their buyer audience and their message. Here are a few to test to see if they work for your company: 1. Advertising - the classic awareness channel. There are search and display ads, ads on social media platforms, video and static ads, ads on search engines, ads on affiliate websites or through the Google network... advertising generically to a wide audience will help build brand awareness, while remarketing to a list of engaged prospects will help drive people back to your website for buying conversations. 2. Content - content is king! Don't tell someone "buy X because we are the best," say instead "solve X problem with Y" and do it through educational content. This could be blog posts (make sure to SEO optimize these for search ranking and AI answers), whitepapers, eBooks, interactive calculators, videos, social carousels, webinars, speaking sessions at events, podcasts, press releases... get the word out there. Once again, content is split based on the impact you want it to have: brand awareness, those ready to buy, and those somewhere in the middle. 3. Email - email is definitely not dead, but it can be overused. Focus your email marketing on educating, and segment your lists well. A new prospect from a list purchase who has never heard of you won't care about your new product release announcement, but they might care about a webinar on a topic they've been focused on during their day job. Create engagement scores that move prospects into new nurture streams filled with different content. 4. Direct Mail - often forgotten, direct mail can have a major impact on larger enterprise deals or for valuable customers. Make sure you're verifying addresses between LinkedIn locations and company database locations, and partnering with sales to actively engage recipients once the mailer arrives. These are usually highly bottom of funnel, more expensive and time consuming engagements, but done correctly can be hugely impactful. 5. Events - an expensive channel, but every industry likely has key events that are worth going to for the visibility and potential to converse and open new deals with prospects. You can do these in bulk - set up a booth, go and work the booth - or you can put together a focused program around each event including pre-event, post-event, and on-site activations. This list only touches the surface of potential marketing channels. You can also utilize your website, partner networks, review sites and company listings, email signatures, BDR/SDR team emails and phone calls, and sales pitch decks to drive impact for the business. No one size fits all, and there will be testing involved to find the right fit!

Direct mail is often forgotten but can have a major impact. One thing to keep in mind is that direct mail is expensive and higher-touch, meaning it reaches less people for more money (time and dollars) required per person. It's best fit for larger enterprise deals or for valuable customers. Make sure you're verifying addresses between LinkedIn locations and company database locations, and partnering with sales to actively engage recipients once the mailer arrives. This is usually a bottom of funnel channel asking for a sales meeting, but can be paired with virtual event promotions when engaging new prospects. Out-of-home is trickier for B2B as it is more difficult to narrow in on your target audience. For high budget brand awareness campaigns it can be a good choice, or for targeted ABM. I once bought a billboard on a big deal primary decision maker's drive to work, to make sure she didn't forget about us during a long sales cycle!

By it's very nature, a Product-Led approach usually focuses on offering a free trial of a product that is relatively inexpensive. It focuses on volume and digital interactions - and marketing should be sourcing the majority of revenue for the company. This means higher marketing budgets, more marketing staff, and a lower number of sales reps. The term "Product-Led" is really a misnomer, because marketing is a key piece of the equation to drive folks in. The free trial itself needs to offer an excellent experience - but marketing also needs to be engaging with prospects every single step of the way before, during, and after their trial. This likely includes channels such as advertising, content, email, and utilizing in-app tutorials and banners. Alternatively, a sales-led company likely requires strong relationship building with buyers, and has a longer sales cycle and a higher selling price. However, don't let the terms "sales-led" fool you - marketing needs to be there working hand-in-hand with sales to drive maximum outcomes. This usually just means marketing is sourcing less of the revenue directly (say, 40% instead of 80%) and there are less marketing heads per new business dollar brought in. Marketing channels used should be more highly targeted, and should incorporate more high-touch programs in collaboration with sales reps. ABM approaches are better fits for this environment.

This is the million dollar question! Many organizations often forget that these are two different things and focus too heavily on demand capture (think, search ads driving to your demo page). However, in order to capture demand, you also need to ensure that there is demand to capture. Think about a buying cycle in 3 stages: awareness, consideration, and purchase. In order to consider buying something, you need to know it exists. Demand capture focuses on people in the consideration and purchase stages, while demand generation focuses on the awareness and consideration stages. For example: * To generate demand, you're going to want to create educational content, speak about the problem your company solves for, and get your brand and this story in front of your target audience. Advertising, webinars, partners, and blogging can all support this. * To capture demand, you want to be easily found when someone is ready to buy - in their inbox and at the top of their search results. Your email campaigns, BDR/SDR teams, and even advertising strategy can support this part of the journey.