Many birds, one stone: Leveraging the power of B2B market surveys

LIsa Vitale marketing GuruAt SimplyDIRECT we love efficiency, but only when it’s paired with, effectiveness. Consequently, we’re all about creating a B2B marketing process that returns value in multiple ways. Today’s post shares our 4 secrets about how a prospect survey can be used as the core content for an entire marketing campaign. To illustrate the content aspect, we’ll highlight the example of a recent SD client, Oracle, and how they have leveraged the results from a market industry survey (sponsored through Gatepoint Research) to create a larger cohesive and integrated marketing campaign.

Seek insights from highly-targeted segments.

To fully realize the value of your prospect survey, be sure that you gain highly-relevant information by targeting a narrowly-defined segment – going broad will dilute the value and applicability of the intelligence you gather. The Gatepoint Research survey, which Oracle sponsored, specifically sought the perspectives of business leaders versus IT professionals, to learn which business priorities matter most to these target buyers.

Use Third Parties to Analyze aggregated results for broader trends and insights.

Research organizations, subject matter experts, and independent industry thought leaders lend credibility to your results. In addition to the survey, Gatepoint Research, a subsidiary of SimplyDIRECT, used the survey findings as the basis for a white paper, Integrated IT Solutions Support Business Priorities.

Publish findings across varied mediums.

Use your aggregated survey results and analysis as the basis for a larger, integrated effort. Publish the key findings, statistics, and analysis in varied forms to appeal to your target audience. For example, in addition to the survey and the subsequent whitepaper, Oracle has repackaged these insights and statistics across a variety media including:

Use individual responses to empower your sales team.

Beyond being a terrific basis for the creation of core marketing content, and the centerpiece for an integrated marketing campaign, surveys help pave the path for the authentic, trust-based relationship required of complex sales by providing the customer intelligence required for meaningful engagement. Not only can surveys return information regarding organizational objectives, pain points, etc., but from them you can also glean from them information about what is of personal value to respondents. This enables your sales team to craft a customized approach that will resonate deeply on the personal, more emotional level.

Read more: Insight for Your Sales Conversations with the C-suite

Ultimately, engagement is predicated on establishing connections, which in turn are predicated on effective communication, and effective communication begins with listening. As the influential psychologist Carl Rogers famously said, inability to communicate is a result of a failure to listen effectively. Surveys are a great way to both listen to individual prospects and to gain the collective pulse of your target audience. From these responses, you can form a personalized approach tailored to a specific prospect, as well as develop a broader, more credible approach for your segment based on independent insights and analyses – all from your one market survey. Now that’s what we at SimplyDIRECT call powerfully effective and smartly efficient!

You can learn more about sponsoring your own market survey by clicking here.