What is the alternative to SEO and Cold Calling for B2B SaaS Vendors

Smoke signals are not really going to be an option to generate new business, however, according to Sifted (An FT company), Founders want and expect help from their investors to secure introductions and assist with new business generation.  This is straining relationships.  Portfolio companies are also surprised when investors expect or demand profitability! 

Irrespective of all the MarTech hype, B2Bs are still cold calling today, even though they are aware that it is a 300-1 shot of trying to find someone who is interested in their product. 

It’s common knowledge everyone hates receiving a cold call, it’s a basic fact.  Also, every receptionist is instructed to dismiss cold callers, so why on earth does it continue in B2B sales.  A clue: desperation!

Even worse, certain companies have resorted to obtaining consumer purchase data, match-making IP addresses against company names (just like caller ID) and against email addresses and mobile numbers and matchmaking against senior personnel from business databases, to call them at weekends.

It’s also a well-known fact telesales operators are the least qualified people in a business, yet have the most important job there is, according to the logic of investors, which is finding new prospects – yet this is supposed to be the remit of the highly paid and often very extensive marketing teams.

SEO is Dead: 1998 – 2018 RIP

Naturally many will say this is nonsense, however, I am specifically referring to B2B SEO.

CMOs and senior marketers have instructed their teams to follow the herd and create thin content, and lots of it. However, this strategy now seems flawed according to the Google SEO Data Leak (you must read this article).  It seems long-form educational and well-structured evergreen content is preferable as short-form multi-weekly posts do not benefit page ranking or visibility.

 Whilst there are a host of conflicting APIs being reviewed, with the SEO industry up in arms, the facts remain; no one knows what to believe or rely upon with Google and no business can base its success on a SaaS platform they have no control over or even understand what it does or doesn’t do.  No bank would lend on that basis!

Going for Your Total Addressable Market

Surprisingly, few B2Bs make a point of only marketing to their total addressable market (TAM) on a regular basis.  Perhaps marketing departments don’t think this is necessary or they’re blinded by the pay-per-click budget size!  FYI: Anyone outside their TAM is a waste of time and there is no point marketing to them. 

For example, of a total addressable market, between 1% and 15% begin their buying journey every week. It’s not rocket science – there are 44,000 businesses in the UK who employ more than 50 employees (or starting from £5m turnover).  Using 10,000 as a TAM, that means between 100-1500 begin their buying journey each week. 

I want to point out here.  The business plan that warranted investment or setting up in the first place should have been based upon the TAM. This being the case, why do most B2Bs not have a specific database and why do they not constantly target these companies.   It is this metric that needs to be reviewed and addressed.  If they had the data, they would not be reliant on pay-per-click.

Marketing Automation for Everyone (For Consumers that Is)

CMOs and marketers have told CEOs that the SaaS automation and budget is akin to the golden goose, and everyone simply needs to wait for the golden eggs to be laid.  This has never happened for B2Bs.

The de-facto strategy for B2B marketing is using Google or LinkedIn pay-per-click linking to a landing page with a form to be filled out, including multiple items of data, which most business wince at being asked.  In 2014 research data was available stating 97% of buyers confirmed they hated filling out forms.  According to Demandbase, in 2023 it had increased to 100%.

Bizarrely, some companies even gate every useful page on their websites meaning even organic traffic are turned away or put off ‘engaging’.

Coincidently, after the report came out by 6sense.com in 2014, by 2016, Account based marketing (ABM) appeared.  When CEOs stated questioning the effectiveness of marketing automation, the likes of Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot launched their ABM add-ons. 

ABM and Content Creation

ABM add-ons or Apps gave marketing automation vendors a response to any CEO who challenged them.  If they said marketing automation wasn’t working, the CEOs were asked “Are you communicating directly with each of the buyers and influencers in the companies you’re selling to?”  Naturally the answer was no!  The result, they didn’t throw out the marketing automation, they simply bought ABM software.  And the tech stack grew and so did the egos of marketers who were managing it.

What B2Bs were not told was they needed to create position specific content for every stakeholder they were trying to influence, and if we accept the current statistics, there is somewhere in the region of sixteen people involved in the buying process.  Can you imagine the workload on the copywriters!

Suffice to say, the automation vendors created a software solution to avoid virtually every business cancelling their automation subscription plans.  Based on the assumption a business needs to write for everyone, which is too much work for most every company, the current default position is they’re doing what they can and nothing else can be done to improve their digital strategies or business success.

I want to make a point here, I am not dismissing email platforms or email service providers (ESPs), all B2Bs still need to communicate with the markets.

In a recent report (2024) Hubspot published that 96% of business buyers wanted to self-serve and self-educate before speaking to a salesperson.  No surprise there, yet they have not offered a solution to address this!

According to Gartner’s previous employee and Senior VP of twenty-five years Brent Adamson, business buyers want to self-serve, self-educate, remain anonymous and establish their own ROI before speaking to a salesperson.  No one wants to reveal their intent and then receive a barrage of cold calls. (Harvard Business Review 2023).

These statistics and their respective authors could not be clearer and should have initiated a change in the way B2Bs market their products.  It didn’t, hence the salesXchange strategy.

Recommendation

Firstly, there is no alternative to cold calling.  No one wants to be called and no one will accept an inbound call.  Don’t waste your money on BDRs who will churn higher than any other member of staff.  Just stop cold calling!

• Concentrate on repetitive and consistent exposure using automated posting of social media adverts to promote your content. We post over 500 adverts and content items every day on LinkedIn, enabling browsers to engage from a few seconds to a few minutes.
• The quantity (500+) ensures no monthly repeats, and the repetition ensures ongoing impressions and engagement unlike we have ever experienced!
• Remove any demand generation forms and allow prospects to look and learn about every aspect of your business and product offering.
• Plan to broadcast a weekly live show hosted by your salespeople.
• Buy a database of your total addressable market.
• Begin an outbound email campaign inviting your TAM to your live show and to engage with your other content.
• If you have budget, upload your database to LinkedIn and pay for banner ads to appear in the newsfeeds of the database names.

Conclusion

This article refers to generating new business without relying on SEO and cold calling.  The next article to read is ‘How to Market your business without relying on pay-per-click.

It will take a few months to get going but will cost pennies by comparison to existing strategies or campaigns and will deliver more exposure and engagement than you have ever experienced in your businesses’ history.   

For further reading, first concentrate on our page called The System.  From this page, there are links to help you gather all the data you need to turn your business around.

Thank me later.