DIGITAL READINESS FRAMEWORK REPORT

What is the current Digital Marketing scenario?

The B2B marketing arena has changed drastically over the past five years and in order to succeed
going digital is the way forward. Not only has the B2B buyer changed but so has the B2B buying
process.

Consumer behaviour has changed, and by extension, so has the buyer’s journey that consumers
follow. It makes sense, then, to ditch the old marketing funnel in favour of something that
accurately represents the journey of today’s digital buyer.

The AIDA concept is being replaced by the See, Think, Do, Care Model.

Let's take a look at this model a little more closely...

From the traditional linear marketing funnel wherein the consumer passes one stage at a time, the
new approach in contrast is a looping journey, as shown.
Currently Partners follow the traditional marketing approach. With digital marketing gaining
traction, it is time the Partners up their Digital prowess.

The top of the funnel includes people in the “see” category who are basically the largest qualified
audience, who either don’t need your product yet or don’t know they need your product. The most
effective way of connecting with buyers at this stage is to ensure that they are made aware of the
product and the benefits it offers.

The digital marketing strategy that works better than the rest for this stage is Social Media
Marketing.

Once the target audience is aware of their needs and the company, they move into the “think”
category. This stage is best known for the research done by consumers. They go back and forth,
through the research and discovery loop via different mediums.
What is most important during this stage, is to build authority and get the target audience onto the
website.

The best digital marketing strategies for middle-of-the-funnel consumers include SEO, Video
Marketing, E-mail Marketing & PPC Search Ads.

Now, coming to the bottom of the funnel it comprises the "Do" category. In this stage the buyer
actually converts from a prospect into a customer. The greatest obstacle in this stage is to produce
content that triggers the user into action.

The best digital marketing strategies for bottom-of-the-funnel consumers include SEO, E-mail
Marketing.

METHODOLOGY

The Digital Readiness Framework gives a quantifiable measure of the Digital Maturity status of
the Partners. It takes into account the metrics that are paramount in the new Digital Marketing
funnel. This framework helps in understanding the current position of the Partners and assists in
lead generation.

Partners have been assessed on metrics in sync with the new digital marketing funnel and have
been scored accordingly. A Balanced Scorecard has been implemented taking into account all
these parameters.

Moving onto the metrics that constitute this framework...

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation, helps to understand how consumers are
searching for and finding information about a brand and competitors
online.

Search Engines drive 93% of all website traffic.

By incorporating SEO strategies into marketing efforts, it increases the

website's visibility and rankings.
 The important factors that have been considered in order to deduce the
efficiency of the Partners' SEO in the framework include:

● Title Tag
The optimal length ranges from 10-70 characters.
● Meta Description Tag
This is important for search engines to understand the content of your page, and
is often shown as the description text blurb in search results.
● Header Tags
They are an important way of signalling to search engines the important content topics
of your page, & subsequently the keywords it should rank for.
<h1> to <h6> are used to define HTML headings.
<h1> defines the most important heading whereas <h6> the least important heading.
In HTML coding, the heading tags from h1 to h6 form a top-down hierarchy. This means
that if you skip any of the tag numbers the heading structure will be broken, which is not
ideal for on-page SEO.

● Keyword Consistency
The page content should be focused around particular keywords you would like
to rank for. Ideally these keywords should be distributed across the various tags.
● Amount of Content
A good level of textual content which assists in its ranking potential.
● Image Alt Attributes
 It specifies an alternate text for an image, if the image cannot be displayed.
● Number of Backlinks
A back link is a link to an external website. They represent a "vote of confidence"
from one site to another.
● Text to HTML Ratio
The text to HTML ratio is the correlation percentage of actual text content found
in a web page. A good Text to HTML Ratio is anywhere from 25 to 70 percent.

PERFORMANCE & CODE INSIGHTS

Performance is important to ensure a good user experience, and reduced bounce rates,
which can also indirectly affect the search engine rankings.

● Image Size
Images make up on an average 21% of a total webpage's weight. Large images
slow down the web page which creates a less than optimal user experience.
Optimizing images means decreasing their file size, which in turn speeds up the
load time of the page.
● Scripts Size
Minifying script files, which consists of removing unnecessary whitespace and
other characters, is an easy way to decrease file size. Such file reduction not only
improves load time, but it can also reduce the size of cached files to allow for
additional caching.
● CSS Size
CSS is used to define styles for your web pages, including the design, layout and
variations in display for different devices and screen sizes.
● Pagespeed Score
Page speed is a measurement of how fast the content on the page loads. Page
speed can be described in either page load time - the time it takes to fully
display the content on a specific page or time to first byte - how long it takes for
the browser to receive the first byte of information from the web server).

SOCIAL MEDIA
With over 3.2 billion people on social media globally, understanding how to market
on various social platforms has become an integral part of every business's
success.
 The best part about marketing in social media is that it is inexpensive. This allows the
company to show off the brand, products and services, and to develop a cohesive brand
message.

The thumb rule to follow is to define the target audience and then match the right social
media platform. The culmination of these efforts should result in brand recognition.

Written articles, videos, and images are the three most engaging types of content on
social media.

Let's look at some figures to drill in the signficance of this platform !

1.56 billion active users log onto Facebook every day.

74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes.
Facebook is the second most-used platform globally.

When it comes to delivering content and securing audience engagement, LinkedIn is the
most effective social media platform.
LinkedIn has over 500 million users.
40% of members visit the professional social network each day.

BLOGS & VIDEO

The purpose of content marketing is to create and share relevant written,
downloadable, and visual media so that the target audience can learn about the
brand, products and services, and expertise.

Why should Partners engage in Blog & Content creation?

Let's dive into some statistics first.

□ 62% of buyers say they can make a business decision based on online content alone.
□ 86% of buyers say they are “overwhelmed and annoyed” with more than 10 pieces of
review content.
□ 32% say confusing content makes buying decisions more difficult.

□ B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost three times more traffic
than those blogging 0-1 times per month.
□ According to the Demand Gen Report 2017, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content
before engaging with a sales representative.
 □ Over its lifetime, one compounding blog post creates as much traffic as six
decaying posts.

Today every blog or a sponsored post is competing with every other blog or sponsored post. The
audience is going through a content shock, in other words, a content overload. Perhaps, to them
what may seem as the only plausible solution may be to avoid all forms of marketing.

This is a major blow to the organisations that have a message to share. Therefore it is for this
reason that Partners have to focus their attention on search engines that will help them meet their
potential customers.

Companies that focus their efforts on search engine optimization can provide relevant information
to their customers who are still in the fact-gathering and searching phase of their buying journey.
The trick to ensure that your company can provide a blog post that engages the audience at the
maximum possible level.

Why is video marketing good for a B2B Business?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that four times as many customers prefer watching a
video about a product rather than read about it, and almost 50 percent of internet users look for
videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.

The success of video and the role it plays depends entirely on two statistics:

The human attention span is eight seconds

Eight seconds of video is roughly equal to 30,000 words

RECOMMENDATIONS

In order to become a front runner in the Digital Readiness Index, the Partners can create a Content
Distribution Calendar.
The first step would be to create a list of all their online marketing assets. After listing them, next
to each asset, put the stage in the buyer’s journey that each asset best targets. If it caters to more
than one stage, include both.

Once the asset has been labelled with a stage in the buyer’s journey, platforms and strategies can
be added for which that asset could be a good fit. For example, blogs work great on social media,
while case studies should be left to email marketing.

From this, a content distribution calendar can be created.

After the creation of the calendar, the final step involves the execution of the plan.

Adopting the Content Distribution Calendar could be made mandatory for the Laggards in order
to boost their digital presence.