B2B marketing strategies have changed in the last 15 years just as a lot has changed in the marketing industry generally over the years. Many business models have come and gone while new ones continue to come up here and there.
The way we mine data, make business decisions and implement our strategies has all evolved and B2B is also included. The issue here is, many marketers still use outdated B2B strategies which are no longer effective.
The result of that is follow up complaints that lead to the closure of hundreds of thousands of B2B businesses every year.
Even though there is so much information accessible online through mobile phones and computers, people still feel making a purchase is difficult and time-consuming.
This calls for a clear and effective B2B marketing strategy that works. With the experience we have gathered over the years, we are going to share all those information with you in this blog post so as to help you create winning B2B strategies to boost your online business growth.
What is B2B Digital Marketing
B2B marketing can be broken into three parts.
- Business Needs Orientation
Finding out what other businesses want and then providing it. - Service Orientation
Making sure everyone in an organization is committed to customer satisfaction. - Profit Orientation
Focusing on the goods and services that will bring the most profit.
There is no specific definition for B2B Digital Marketing, but if we try to sum up all the above, we can define it as;
The activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings with value for other businesses and partners through the world wide web.
B2B Digital Marketing Strategies
First, as a marketer, it doesn’t matter whether you are into the digital world or not, you must always keep in mind the marketing mix. The marketing mix is focused on the four P’s; Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Driven by those principles, we will analyze some of the best B2B Digital Marketing Strategies.
Research and Target
Let’s face the truth, you will never have enough time, money and resources for only one digital marketing strategy. So you must always start with your audience. You must understand your potential business-client and create the most accurate “buyer persona”.
Make a research about the needs that your “buyer persona” has, and try to recreate a pattern. If you do not target the right buyer, all your digital marketing strategies will reach an impasse and fail.
Email Marketing
E-mail Marketing is a common B2B Marketing Strategies that is a proven and effective way to reach your clients and potential clients. More than 90% of marketers use this marketing strategy, do you belong in this percentage? If you are not, let us explain why you should try this strategy.
B2B clients are searching for a positive-high ROI and they wonder how your business can help their business improve. According to the Data & Marketing Association (UK-2019), indicated, for every $1 you spent on Email Marketing, there is a potential average of $42 return.
With Email Marketing, you can share your brand content through helpful and meaningful messages.
Here is how you can run Email Marketing Strategy?
You can achieve the maximum out of this strategy by following those
steps-options
- Write attractive promotional copies.
- Integrate CTAs in emails and through their segmentation.
- Reach of your audience at whatever stage of the buyer’s journey they are.
Website or Landing page
Οut of the world wide web, you want your salesmen to be presentable and pleasant to the client. You should view your website or landing page as your salesmen on the web.
Be sure that your website runs properly and delivers the right message you want to the visitors. Most businesses are trying to find new partners and reach them through the web. Your website in most case is the first contact point. For this reason, you should ensure it works very well and looks pleasant at all times.
Ensure your website load fast and is secured wit encryption (use SSL certificate) to encrypt your website to protect your customer’s data and improve confidence level among your clients especially if you are selling products on your website.
To be sure B2B Marketing Strategies objectives are on the track and you are reaching those businesses and the right people in the right places you need a really good SEO of your website.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
When SEO comes into play, techniques include many things. We are talking about on-page SEO; things that are visible to your website visitors, such as the alt-text of an image or the meta description of your article. Also, there is off-page SEO; things that are not visible to them, such as structured data or site speed.
Another interesting trick to make B2B work is to target specific persons through SEO and Lead Generation Website. The purpose of the lead generation website is to provide valuable and educational content to visitors seeking information, guiding and encouraging them to take action while collecting valuable information about them through supplementary information.
So let’s summarize
How to create a perfect Landing Page & targeted clients through SEO
- Professionally design a functional landing website.
- Take care of SEO.
- Check the backlinks and internal links within your website.
- Create a Leading Website and connect it with CTAs.
Affiliates and Partnerships
Αffiliates and partnerships can be proved as a very important strategy with high results, especially for small businesses as they struggling to grow up, affiliates can help you connect to bigger networks and reach more clients as a result to boost your earnings.
But a few conditions have to be met to make your affiliate strategy work; You will need: enough resources for a professionally established affiliate program, strong incentives for affiliates to promote your products or services, and affiliates who can effectively promote your brand to the right target segment.
How to create strong Affiliates and Partnerships
- Invest time in recruiting the right affiliates.
- Offer enough motivation for your partners.
- Use affiliate marketing to boost your lead generation.
Social Media Marketing (Business Advertising)
We do not think there is a reason to explain or give a definition of Social Media marketing in 2020. Social Media is part of our lives and most people have at least one account to any of those famous platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube e.t.c. which makes it an important fit in our list of B2B Marketing Strategies.
We will break the social media marketing into 8 parts to make it easy for you.
#1. Targeting actions, to solve the challenges you face.
Enhancing brand awareness, improving ROI and generating fans are some of the goals you can accomplish through this strategy. In B2B marketing you may think that this strategy is not effective but the right people in the right places are using social media and your goal is to reach them and make them notice you.
#2. Research and analyze the target audience for your actions.
Know your buyer-persona. In order to create content and choose the right social platform that will attract and interact with your potential customers, you need to know well whom you are targeting, what their needs are, their interests and what their “pains” are.
#3. Define the most important metrics.
In order to evaluate if your actions are achieving your goals, you must define the metrics that describe better your Social Media Marketing Strategy and keep a good track of them.
#4. Know your competitors in your Social Media.
Analyzing and researching your competitors on social media will give you a clear image. From the content, they have posted on their page, which posts have the most engagement? Questions like this can be really helpful to understand, in which direction you can turn your strategy and sometimes to redefine your competitors.
#5. Combine Content and Social Platform
Create and distribute engaging content according to the style of each social media platform. Remember, creating appropriate content according to the social media channel plays a very important role in the effectiveness of a social media marketing strategy.
#6. Interact and Q&A
In B2B relations you need to interact with your clients and be sure you understand their problems and find the best solutions to keep them satisfied. Answer their questions fast and keep high quality in customer service through those platforms.
#7. Monitor the performance
Monitor your social media marketing strategy and continually improve your actions. Identify which actions went well and which ones failed, so you can be able to modify your strategy and get even closer to achieving your goals.
#8. Choosing a trusted partner
A social media marketing strategy can be part of a business’s digital marketing strategy, but it requires a dedicated team to design and implement it properly at all levels. So, find the right people to make it work.
Video Marketing
If you still reading this post prepare yourself for the best B2B Marketing Strategy for 2020. Video Marketing is getting interesting and Online video is where we’ve seen the most growth through the last years.
And if you think that B2B researchers are not watching videos before they make a buy action you are wrong. B2B researchers are watching videos throughout and it is not just viewing. According to statistics B2B buyers watch 30 minutes or more of B2B-related videos and its more than 60% of them.
Once you find the perfect buyer-persona create content and deliver it through a video. B2B researchers will notice the important content and they will come in contact with you.
B2B Marketing Strategies Examples
Here are some of the ways you can promote your B2B business to see significant growth within a short period. These include most of the things we discussed above.
Email Marketing
- New service offering notifications
- Blog newsletters
- Monthly newsletters
- Webinar notifications
Social Media Marketing
- Keep in touch with the clients
- Pursue the feedback
- Pick the right content
Video Marketing
- Create the right content and deliver it through a detailed explanation
- Make it simple and user-friendly
Conclusion
B2B Marketing Strategies involves carefully crafted objectives to achieve the main goal. In the digital era, some of the above-discussed strategies has proven time over again that it helps companies grow and compete on a fairground.
The above strategies are not the only ones. We picked the most effective and the best to outline them here in order to assist you in your business growth and development.
Always remember, when it comes to B2B Marketing Strategies, there is not just one strategy that can fit every company, you have to find the best for your business and try it.
Which one was your favourite? Are you going to try out any of them? Let us know what you think and feel free to ask in the comment section.
