The relationship between software leads and trends is often overlooked, misunderstood, but worst of all, it’s taken for granted. Ask yourself: why are trends necessary, even in complex processes such as software lead generation? You’ll find that while you know they’re necessary, you can never thoroughly explain why.
So below is a quick review on why trends help your B2B marketing strategy and a few tips on how to use this knowledge to better understand trendspotting.
Reason #1: Behavior – Understanding buyer behaviour is a basic objective in lead generation campaigns. Trends obviously affect that behaviour. Therefore, knowing when to expect trends and what effect they may have will tell you what kind of behaviour you’ll need to drive towards a buying decision.
Reason #2: Content – Closely linked with behaviour is the kind of content your target market wants to consume. Often in B2B marketing, the best content for your audience is the kind that provides very useful information (even if it’s just useful for a brief period of time). What defines useful though could depend on any trending problems.
Reason #3: Customer expectations – Other trends cover entire industries. Even without you reporting anything directly, larger players would buzz about future innovations (e.g. social enterprise, BYOD, cloud computing etc). News of these innovations will reach customer ears and in turn impact their expectations from any vendor attempting to pitch products their way.
Reason #4: Channels for consumption – Perhaps they won’t just change their expectations. Perhaps they’ll also change the way they’ll actively search for those that meet their expectations. Social media and mobile are becoming the first resource of choice when prospects are researching tech providers. Understanding how these trends is another good reason to stay tuned.
Reason #5: Segments – Certain portions of your target market may be affected by some trends but not others. The mixed impact is another way trends can force your marketers to change gears. And without proper analysis, you’ll only get more clueless until you take these changes seriously.
There are even a dozen more reasons to spot trends and how to do it right both for generating quality software leads as well as your overall enterprise strategy.
