Generating new B2B leads in Singapore can prove difficult. While there are undoubtedly plenty of opportunities available, being part of such a vibrant and busy market can mean it is hard to get noticed. This is why an effective sales and marketing strategy is so important when targeting businesses in the region.
An essential part of being able to plan and conduct your strategy successfully is having the right tools to hand. A survey by Steelhouse found that on average marketers use five different tools for their marketing activities - but which ones are the most useful for the B2B market? Here's our pick of sales and marketing tools that will help you see the best results when targeting Singapore businesses.
In order to have any hope of attracting a sufficient number of leads to your business, you need to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to find you. Despite this, a worrying number of small businesses fail to realise the importance of efficient and well-crafted marketing; research from Web.com found that 43% had no plans to change or improve their online presence during 2017.
Great marketing begins with the right tools. One of the most essential for marketing is the Content Management System (CMS). This software allows your team to create and manage all of your digital content, from blog posts to landing pages. Without having a decent CMS in place, the rest of your stack will fail to reach its potential.
Alongside your CMS, the other most important B2B marketing tools are:
Your website is a vital part of demonstrating what your brand is about and why potential customers should choose you over the competition. A clunky site that's full of bugs isn't going to fill your prospects with confidence about your company, so make sure it's aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate and regularly updated.
In order to find the best platform for your business, consider things like:
Ease of integration - Will you be able to connect your website to other tools such as those used for automation?
Security - Is your website safe for customers to enter their details? Is it protected from cyber threats? How will you fix it if it goes down?
Scalability - Can you easily access and update your website as your businesses grows and evolves?
Best for your niche - What are your competitors using? Can you get ahead of the curve by being more advanced? Or are they all using the same software, in which case, why? Global Database’s digital insights will inform you what platform any company is using through a search of the company name or filtering the database via things like industry, location, company size and revenue.
A very good tool for converting potential leads is to use landing pages. These are pages made specifically as part of a marketing campaign, used to convince visitors to follow a call-to-action (e.g. making a purchase, downloading a whitepaper or subscribing to a newsletter). They're usually the standalone pages that someone is taken to after clicking an ad.
When looking for the most efficient tool to create landing pages, you'll need to focus on something that allows you to create them quickly and easily. It's also important that you can easily integrate forms onto the page, with the data entered by the lead then synced automatically to your other tools, such as the CRM. It can also be useful to split test landing pages in order to determine the type that engages your audience better, so finding a tool that allows this function is a good idea.
Blogging is not only a great way to bring warm leads to your site organically, it's also important for those who are already interested in your business. Nowadays much more of the sales process is completed before a prospect even makes contact with a salesperson. Instead, they'll research your company and form an impression using the available information.
A regularly-updated blog with lots of valuable and interesting content not only makes it easier for people to find you, it also positions your brand as an expert and makes doing business with you much more attractive. This helps to explain why the majority of B2B marketers saw better results after focusing on content marketing, as is shown in the chart below.
Image source: Content Marketing Institute 2017 B2B report
You should take into consideration these notes when searching for a blogging tool:
SEO - How easy is it to optimise your content for keywords and phrases that your audience might search for?
Functionality - Can your team create and publish professional-looking posts from the get-go?
Integration - Does the blog connect easily with your CMS, email and other tools?
Personalisation - Truly effective blog content is personalised to your target audience. Global Database offers insights into companies across every industry so you can determine their concerns and interests. For example, looking at their web traffic can tell you if they need a better lead generation strategy, or finding out their credit score can signal that they're looking for alternative financing options.
Email is still without a doubt one of the most effective tools for sales and marketing purposes, particularly for B2B; CTRs are 47% higher for B2B campaigns compared to their B2C counterparts. It needs to be done correctly though, and this starts with actually targeting the right contacts.
Global Database can offer high-quality B2B leads across all Singapore industries; all of which contain direct email addresses. You can filter the database using employee job title and seniority level, allowing you to only contact those who have decision making power.
However you build your email list, when it comes to messaging leads it's imperative to look for an email marketing tool that is:
Easy to use - In order to keep things efficient and ensure you're not wasting time and money, use a tool that is easy for your team to implement.
Metrics-filled - You need to know who is opening and engaging with your messages in order to assess what works for your audience.
Compliant - Does the tool comply with regulations e.g. CAN-SPAM? This is not only important to keep you on the right side of the law, but also to prevent your messages being marked as spam and having your future campaigns suffer as a result.
Marketing automation not only nurtures prospects effectively, it also saves your team vital time on completing basic tasks that can be spent closing deals with qualified customers. The key point for any tools in this niche is that they integrate seamlessly with things like your company's CRM and CMS, any tool that doesn't do this efficiently will have a negative impact on your automation strategy.
Drive your Singapore B2B marketing campaign with qualified contact lists from Global Database.
Your CRM is the contact database that manages all of the interactions between you and your customers. It allows you to monitor each step of the sales pipeline for each lead, and helps to establish which methods are working and which aren't. This tool needs to be seamlessly connected to your other systems including marketing automation and the CMS, and you need to determine exactly what information you'll need to feed into it in order to target and track your leads sufficiently.
You can quickly and easily populate your CRM with contact data and comprehensive company insights from Global Database's Singapore B2B directory; just download the data you need and export it via Excel.
In order to enable your sales and marketing tools to work as efficiently as possible, you need to ensure that the data they're fueled by is as accurate and complete as possible. Research from IBM found that bad data costs the US $3.1 trillion a year, and the negative effects on businesses can be extremely damaging.
Global Database understands the importance of offering error-free and up to date information, which is why our business intelligence platform is subject to consistent checks and updates. Our comprehensive Singapore company details can be used to drive sales and grow your business by offering qualified leads, information on competitors, due diligence checks and details for personalising campaigns.
Regardless of the sector you’re in, you can gain instant access to all the data you need to keep your sales and marketing tools running smoothly.
The information contained in the database is presented in a clear and easy-to-navigate way.
Having the right tools to set up and manage your sales and marketing campaigns is essential to keeping the momentum going and ultimately creating further growth. When considering the best tools to use for your B2B Singapore marketing campaigns, a key factor to bear in mind is that they should all integrate efficiently and in as little time as possible.
To find company data for businesses in your sector try our platform at www.GlobalDatabase.com
