Is BANT still working for Digital Sales to qualify the prospect?

What is Digital Sales?

Digital Sales, in general, is a practice of getting a business in six steps Research - Prospect - Assessment - Presentation - Negotiation - Retention. These steps are, perhaps, being exercised in carrying digital sales, but what is BANT? Why was it crucial to qualify a lead on the BANT system? Let's comprehend! 

“Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Consumers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don't catch up, we’re in trouble.” - Ian Schafer

What is BANT?

BANT is an important method to qualify the sales leads, and it stands for Budget - Authority - Need - Time. Initially, BANT used to be a very efficient way to identify better sales opportunity if a lead had:

• Specific budget to purchase the service or product
• Authority to make decisions to buy the service or product
• Need for the service or product that a company offers
• Particular timeframe to purchase the service or product

Why was BANT important? 

It has made sense in early days when BANT was proactively used in sales methodology to qualify a prospect by a salesperson. They would be curious to know if the prospect had enough money, a decision-maker for approving a budget, and a timeline. It's, therefore, at the moment hard to argue that BANT seems to be not working any longer in digital sales.

Let's have a look at BANTs positive implications and negative consequences on different types of sales.

POSITIVE IMPLICATIONS:

Is BANT relevant for B2C digital sales? I believe, one of the principal advantages that BANT has, its ability to let the lead undergo a thorough screening process; it's essential to know:

• The budget of the prospect - whether a lead can pay for what a company offers.
• A decision-maker - to know that who is buying authority, and where to head for the final conversations.
• A need - to know that prospect has a need to what a company offers.
• A timeframe - that is required to qualify a lead’s estimated time to buy the product.

This method gives a score to the lead by the assessment, and it is very crucial for sales team so that the focus remains on legitimate prospect instead paying attention to leads that are unworthy. One of the more reasons to use BANT could be the concentration on the sales pipelines. When it comes to closing the lead, the salesperson has to assess the lead using BANT that helps them to gauge the degree of interest and better visibility into the time and budget factors of a prospect. However, I think it is argumentative that the person who is asking about the product to a salesperson has in-fact any requirements? What if an individual is just garnering information? The whole process is likely to be in be in vain. So, is still BANT relevant? Let's walk through where BANT lacks.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES:

In the digital world, buyers have more purchasing power, and are more proactive and smart enough to comprehend their needs, and they understand their budget. Their unprecedented access to the information on the internet makes them wholly informed.

A recent survey conducted by Sirius Decisions and CEB on B2B sales state that more than 50% of the entire buying process is accomplished even before a buyer establish the first talk to the sales representative. That means a sales person, who follows BANT, is too late in the game. Some of the general reasons why BANT is unsuccessful for sales lead qualification:

• Fake Buyers: They know how to garner the information, they answer everything that is being asked to qualify them on BANT by a salesperson, but is the information correct? A Recent survey by DemandGen suggests, “only 20% buyers provide accurate information about their needs that means every 8 out of 10 are lying about the information.” This study, however, supports that BANT is no longer relevant.
• Traditional buying is extinct: BANT disqualifies those prospects who do not have a budget to decide. DemandGen in its survey found that “82% buyers don't follow traditional medium of buying where they'd to allocate a budget before buying any product.” This result depicts that all leads are disqualified and unworthy on the system according to BANT because no budget is assigned, despite, in reality, few of them might likely to allocate the budget at the later stage.
• Group Authorities: In today's buying process, especially in B2B digital sales, no sole buying authority is assigned to purchase a product. A group of members is involved in decision-making process. In the recent survey, conducted by CEO Insights reported, "76% respondents said that more than 2 people are participating in the final buying decision process." It indicates that these individuals alone will not obtain absolute buying authority, and each of the persons will have their perspective towards buying process, and BANT cannot identify this view as a qualified lead.
• Time-based buying: Time play a vital role in BANT, but the way information is loaded on the internet, I believe by the time, sales person defines a timeline for a buyer; the prospect has already accomplished most of the buying process. Buyers, in the digital era, identify their needs, evaluate complementary solutions, get spending approvals and decide the purchase timelines.

What be the conclusion...?

I believe that BANT is no longer working for lead qualification in B2B digital sales, therefore, need to renounce, however, although it cannot be affirmed that BANT is utterly dead at least for B2C sales; The whole new makeover is just required to come up with fresh sets of questions and process instead qualifying a lead on traditional BANT.

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How To Use Advanced targeting for Facebook Ad

Are you using Facebook Ads?

How often do you target your audience with advanced targeting methodology? Are you targeting right people? Are you shrewdly managing to garner the right information about your audience with the help of Facebook graph search? 

You will probably want to knock spots off your counterpart when it comes to more conversions and a better return on investments. Integrate the data of Facebook Advanced/Graph Search and Audience Insight al together to increase the ROI factor for your Facebook campaign. This article is about 'to Use Advanced Targeting For Facebook Ad.'

Before getting down to run a campaign on any social network, it is significant that you tailor the right audience to increase the conversion rates. You must have a key to operate that who are your right targeted audience. You must know what they (audience)like, dislike, where they live, what profession are they into or who they are? precisely to run an ad campaign, which is more likely to be the one of your successful campaign and naturally, a factor of commendation!

Here I am going to embark on that how have I chosen my selected audience with the help of their Interests, locations and professions and integrate the suggestion in interest box on the dashboard page of 'Audience Insight' in 'Managing adverts' page of the Facebook ad campaign. Make sure as long as your campaign is precise and your target audience is selected diligently your return on investment will be higher relative to the ad campaign cost and your campaign will be running troubled-free.

Finding Data Audience Who Liked Other Pages

Search for the keywords 'pages liked by people who like page "x"' and combine the data in the 'audience network' in 'interest' box. When you research potential audience for your ad campaign, take into consideration that what they are liking apart from your own page. Pages can render some useful information pertaining to the interests and hobbies of audience that are of similar types. 

Type in the search bar 'Pages liked by people who like 'your' page' and you will probably witness the list of other pages regardless to the specific competition criteria. You will see that people who already liked your page have liked your's competition page as well (not always). This will give you better 'insight' and 'understanding' that what your target audience likes and helps you research their competition. You may later add these pages as an interest in the 'audience insight' section. 

""Pages liked by People who Like Your Page" and see the other interest of your audience"

So, that is indeed an easy task and trust me this research will facilitate your ad campaign. Once you have gotten the other interests of the same audience you can specifically target them with the audience insight combining the Facebook graph search result. For instance, you're a small brand and want to contend the big one, simply find that brand audience's key interest and base your ad campaigns accordingly.

Now that you have already gotten the desired result, the second phase is to put these interests in the audience insight page to tailor the specific audience, this phenomenon is called 'cross-reference'. It is recommended that you note down the key interest where there is a majority of Facebook users and then enter each specific keyword in the interest box of audience insight page. You will be astound to see that not all result are found in that page but you can integrate some more beneficial interest. 

    "Graph section result is integrated with audience insight"

              

With these interests, it is seen that I can reach 84% Men out of 76% total Facebook users. In this way, I am targeting quite a comprehensive range of audience and my ad is likely to appear to potential people. Here you can also target people of specific age, gender, device usage and of course location. 'Household and Purchase' option is only available in the US as of now.

In the above illustration of graph search result, 'Renault' was not listed as the interest of the audience but it is specified in the interest section in audience insight. This proves that you may find some more specific interest in the audience insight and these are of course pivotal when you target the Facebook users.

Location and Specific Interest Based Research

""Pages liked by people who Like 'Your' page and live in 'Your' city" and see the interest."

Combine pages liked by people who like 'your' page and live in 'your' city with audience insight. For location based targeting in your Facebook ad, look for cities or zip-codes or areas to find the potential audience. Alternatively, if you want to be more specific in this field add some interest area for instance, 'People who liked 'your' page and liked 'other page' live in 'your' city. This technique will help you aiming to those people who you know already and that they can be attracted towards your ad. 

For instance: You're a burger manufacturer and want to contend with leading brand 'Mc Donald', you'll probably want to target the people of your own city who have interest in McD and get to know their competitions and interests further on.

  "Pages liked by people who like 'your' page and live in 'your' city"

            

"Pages liked by people who like 'your' page and like 'other page'"

The above illustration is just an example to show the common interest that people may have. However, Domino's Pizza is sheer distinct in the business theme. As I already mentioned, that making such searches not only help finding the right audience but aids permeating the brand effectively. 

The graph search reveals some data which are incredible and invaluable when it comes to reaching the right audience. Your ad has maximum chances of getting shown to the people who are religiously following your brand and associated with it. I thank to this feature of Facebook ad to let reach to the potential audience. You can garner the data based on specific city and hometown place.

After cross-reference of the data from Facebook graph search with audience insight, I have found some astonishing outcomes that in my city people who uses desktops and mobiles phones are 44% as likely to have larger user than Facebook users and computer, iPhone, iPad, blackberry and Android have 25%, 147%, 125%, 16% and 100% more likely to use than Facebook users respectively. However, these data are trivial but when garnering information out of these data, it is always imperative to know whom you're targeting.

"Audience insight based on the Facebook graph search"

                 

 "Data based on device users"

                                     

Always remember when targeting audience of different geographic locations this data is very useful in making the ad more specific and that can be           communicated with users and serve their interest. People who are living in New Delhi may have distinctive interests and values that of who are living in Mumbai.

Location Based Occupation Research

""Pages liked by an occupation who lives in 'your' city" and see the interest based on occupation."

Choosing audience based on occupation is pivotal to your campaign health therefore always choose the keyword successfully before tailoring the potential audience. Type in for "Pages liked by an occupation who lives in 'your' city" and you will probably witness some more interest area of your audience.

For instance: If you're targeting 'sales' people by their occupation and you have a product which helps various sales professionals to garnering their confidential data at one place and reconciling when needed, you want them to purchase the software and you'd probably use this keyword to reach the right audience in Facebook graph search.

 "Pages liked by an 'occupation' who lives in 'your' city"

                       

Once you have accomplished this process, now access the 'audience insight' page and cross-reference these pages in 'interest' box. You will be able to check the pertaining information i.e. age, income, family, household size and income, lifestyle  and purchasing power. Out of all, household and purchasing/buying power option is only available in the US. Once you have gotten an idea as to how your audience look like, it will be really easy for your to design an ad on Facebook.

Collate the Data into Actionable Process

After prepping the data garnered from Facebook Graph search and audience insight, it's time to integrate the data to see how successfully an advertising campaign can be.

I am going to take the above illustration of 'sales' into targeting for effective advertising campaign. Embarking on targeting the age demographic based on what audience insight says about sales people in New Delhi.

  "Age Demographic for 'sales' in New Delhi, India"

                   

Clearly this data demonstrates that in my 'tailored audience' -- the age range of 25-34 are 49% and 51%, men and women respectively, which is relatively more than any other age range and I'm targeting the most responsive age group among my target audience. Next, I am going to show you the relationship status and education level in the target audience group.

Facebook graph search and audience insights suggest multiple pages which can be used to create as sorted tailored audience in the 'interest' box. Finally we will have chance to see the 'Job Title' where more people are associated with 'management' in our target audience network. Clearly, management has relatively higher percentage than others. Remember: Lifestyle, Purchasing Behaviour and Brand Affinity are not accessible in India as of now.

"In the job title category, management has the highest percentage in this audience"

If in this target audience, management professions are more -- then create an ad which attracts management professionals with appealing image that cater the requirement of your audience. An ad is captivating when it has great content and an appealing image. User will only click your ad if it has something to communicate so always select your audience based on extensive research and people's requirements. There are indeed a lot more information pertaining to your target audience on Facebook, all you have to do is make a fine research, put all things together and see the results. 

I am going to wind up my article real fast whilst asking you few question: Did you use Facebook Ads? How often did you use them? How did you combine the results from Facebook Graph Search and Audience Insight? Were they effective enough to bring you to the desired campaign results? 

I welcome your comments on this article. For more information kindly, mail me at 'nikhilmisra@outlook.com.'

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Getting Started Guide To Successful LinkedIn Ads

• Did you find LinkedIn the most effective platform for paid campaigns or demand generations?
• Want to reach the professional audience through the paid-visual ads or messages?

   LinkedIn ad is all you require to reach professional audience and this is the most effective way to present your message to increase the visibility of your brand or demand generation for your product. It is often said, that a creative content abreast visual effect will give your post an added advantage. Now a days, marketers are using distinctive ad networks i.e Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest, to render the information pertaining to their services or products. In this article, I'll enlighten the common features that LinkedIn ad has; how it helps showcase your expertise to the professional audience and aids increase the visibility of your product.

1. Why LinkedIn ads?
2. Getting Started.
3. Creating sponsored/text ad.
4. Selecting the target audience.
5. Setting the daily budget.
6. Monitoring and optimizing the insights from LinkedIn Analytic.

Why LinkedIn Ads?

Regardless to what industry you serve, you will always find people who are concomitant to your business theme in some ways and you will always find those professionals over LinkedIn network. With over 'Four Hundred Million users' who are mostly professionally acquainted, your product has better chance of getting promoted with the help of LinkedIn ads. Business is always build on trust and trust enhance the visibility of the brand.

There are distinctive features that LinkedIn ad offers: Sponsored Updates; Professional audience; Precise B2B Targeting; Ads format and Premium advertising tools.

• Sponsored Updates: Helps reaching the LinkedIn feeds, stories across web and mobile view. 
• Professional Audience: Most advantageous feature to let showcase what you have gotten for the professional audience and influential professionals.
• Precise B2B Targeting:  Helps you to find right targeted audience among the group of professional people. For instance: Your product is meant for ICT sector, you have a chance to tailor your audience whose 'Job Title or Industry' lie under 'ICT' mark. 
• Ads Format: This is yet another common feature alike other ad networks which aids you design the ad on your preferences -- Text ads; Video ads and Text or Images ads.
• Premium Advertising Tool: LinkedIn offers premium advertising tools. For instance: Display ads; Lead accelerator; Sponsored group with more integrated options and Sponsored InMails for those whose quarterly budget exceeds to $25,000.

LinkedIn tends to be more expensive platform than Google or Facebook, but for medium and small business owners 'Sponsored Content' and 'text ads' are best way to reach the target audience. Sponsored contents are like sponsored tweets or Facebook sponsored ads on the Facebook feeds and text ads are identical to Google ads or Facebook ads. However, if ads are targeted accurately and precisely this ad network becomes the least expensive. 

"Sponsored contents on Twitter and Facebook"

                               

Out of other ad networks, LinkedIn allows to tailor the target audience based on companies, educations, industries, title or respective posts. The more you're precisely targeting the less money will be spent as you're reaching those who want your product not those who prefer to circumvent to avoid it. Breaking down of big campaigns seldom result on a common occasion when targeted big audience nevertheless to segregate big campaigns in smaller one will give definitive outcomes.

Getting Started

Before you get embarked with any type of advertisement, you have got to proactively research as to how you are likely to let your audience watch your ads: Text or Video, secondly you must make sure that you've chosen right target audience to permeate your brand and increase it's visibility. For instance: If you're working for ICT Industry -- you'd probably want to check that your ads are on basis of correct demographics; title of the job; industry; relevant education background or by job seniority.

Whilst choosing your audience, be prepping the list of right audience and try to be as specific as possible. If you're vaguely ambiguous about the exact information pertaining to the business theme of the company, you can visit their company page and at the bottom of company's page you will find the essential information. In addition to this, you may want to find the list of the professionals through whom your connection to that company has been made.

To initiate your campaign on LinkedIn, you must have your company's page because that way ads will be better triggered. To create a business page just click the 'interest' tab and select 'companies' from drop-down menu. Describe your business and other relevant details accompany with logo and head titles and your page will become professional. For LinkedIn Ads go the website www.linkedin.com/ads/  and create a campaign of your choice.

Creating Sponsored/Text Ad

To create an ad, just click Sponsor content/Create ad. I am clicking on 'Creating an ad' and filling out general information. Make sure that when you do this please choose the name which can be easily recalled later when opening up the campaign's insight to facilitate the optimisation process.

Once you've chosen the campaign type and name, the next section is                 'Ad variation'. In particular, LinkedIn offers 15 variations-tab in which you can test which ad photo and text suits the best and looks more appealing and accordingly choose the desired action.

"Ad Variation tab to enter the details of the ad"

                            

"Preview of the ad in three ways: Square; Tall and Long"

                      

There are some basic tips which you need to comprehend when running an ad and deciding the target audience for your ad.

• Strong words that define your business - LinkedIn ads serve distinctive approach hence use the words that grab the professionals attention.
• Include Image/Video - for better engagement and conversions always put an image that best advocate your brand and helps pervade it.

Selecting Target Audience

Now that you have optimised the ad and concluded which ad will be played as a final one, the next section is to select the audience. Once you embark taking the plunge to tailor the target audience, be specific as much as possible. Specific tailored target-audience process is indispensable for the ad campaign and particularly serve the purpose by showing them to the selected audience. 

You can target your audience on the basis of 'Location'; be specific with the location because it plays a pivotal role in choosing the right person at the right location. Once that you have decided the location field, 2 more field to be used to segregate your targeted audience: 'Companies'; 'Job Title'. Your focus should be on Job Titles or Job Seniority. You can also make it more specific with the help of 'advanced targeting' and you can make notches at the school, field of study, groups, degrees, skills and gender preferences.

If you're targeting specific group of people, you can select it by naming the group field with that specific keyword. In addition to this, you may have an option to exclude any certain company or set of companies, people, job titles and specific geographic region. You can also base your target audience on skill set and you may exclude specific skill (as you don't want to show your ads to the specific skill which is not listed and of course it will go in the air or too intricate to apprehend the ad).

"Target audience on basis of Location, Companies, Job Title, groups or skills"

     

"Target audience on basis of Degree, Gender, Age and Field of Study"

      

You might have seen there is a box "Audience Expansion" at the bottom; clicking that feature will increase your reach as 'LinkedIn helps reaching people similar to the targeted audience'. In first phase of your campaign, it is recommended that you 'uncheck' that box as it helps limiting the audience and if you don't get your desired result you may check that box and optimise the result later.

Setting Daily Budget and Bids

Now that I have already set my target audience, it's a turn for paying the amount. Make sure when you are running Sponsor Ads select CPC as a payment option and CPM for Text Ads. However, CPC is relatively lesser expensive than CPM. 

LinkedIn will show you minimum bid and suggest the bid range. Try to put your bid for 'per 1000 impression' in the bid range as it likely to get your ads prioritise before your counterparts. After setting the bid, it's time to set the daily budget, your campaign will require a daily budget to be spent. Set the daily budget which is more than the minimum threshold set by LinkedIn. This is the amount which you're likely to spend over a day. Always tell LinkedIn that how long would you like to run the campaign -- if the campaign is for 'Brand Awareness' it should set to a minimum of 2 months. 

                      " The campaign's details along with the payments"

Once you have accomplished it successfully the next option is the 'checkout' where you enter the details of your credit/debit card along with the billing address and other relevant information pertaining to the authenticity of the card holder. Unfortunately, I could have not clicked the image with filled form as it's infringes the agreement between my bank and me. :)

Once that you have reviewed your order and you have paid for the campaign--the analytics takes into place. Now it can be saved. 

Monitoring and Optimizing the Insights from LinkedIn Analytics

LinkedIn analytics are best as it tells everything about the campaign effectiveness right starting from Status; Clicks, Budget Impression CTR, Social Action, Average CPC and Total Value. 

"Campaign insight 'brand awareness' it continued for 1 month"

The above campaign's screenshots were randomly created to garner the initial protocols and process of LinkedIn ads and now that I am going to show you the instance with the help of my previous LinkedIn campaigns. Once you're running up and getting the social analytics results on your dashboard page, you can optimise it the way you want. 

In this campaign the total number clicks were recorded to be '400' which according to the target audience was a great result. We made the payment on CPC basis. Had we paid on the basis of CPM (Mille), we would have costed more than CPC. 

Here is another instance when I am going to tell you the distinction between the 'Total Budget' and 'Total Spent' LinkedIn rendered special benefits to those ads which were popular among your target audience. Somehow, you will be astonish to see that when my total budget is $50, how am I entitle to pay $175 but in this case I am not charged with additional $125 because LinkedIn never charge you beyond the limit you set for your campaign. Sometimes, LinkedIn aids additional benefits with no extra charge. In here, $125 clicks were utterly free of cost. Though, the reason behind this is still not affirmed but it happened more seldom in my campaigns. 

 "Total Spent Vs Total Budget"

                                        

You can say there is one more hidden option alike Twitter where it asks you to targets your own followers as well. Here is an example for Twitter first.

Go in the settings of the campaign and select the specified audience with the help of this feature. I have always checked the box when I have run a Twitter campaign. Alike Twitter, LinkedIn has this option to get your ads shown in the connection. There is a section called "Network Update" once you check the box, LinkedIn will send the ad to your connection as well for free.

 "Go in the setting tab and check the box 'network Updates'"

             

Alike Google, I like one more thing about LinkedIn ad that they also offer a credit amount to run the ad for the first time. You have got to enter the right credit/debit card details and you're good to go.

Once you start running LinkedIn ads, you would probably know the area from where the traffic is generated and I am sure that you'd love posting on LinkedIn and the insights relative to other ad network will give you firm determination that which ad network is precise and render better result.

I hope you'd certainly like what I have shared. I will keep sharing new and disruptive technologies with you. Any comment pertaining to this post can be asked to me directly or through mail. 'nikhilmisra@outlook.com'

Did you like the post? Did you use LinkedIn ads? What is the successful rate of your LinkedIn ads? Please share your comments.

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