It's no secret that business-to-business marketing can be a difficult task.
There are large investments involved with B2B buying, especially compared to consumer purchases. This means that the sales process will take longer because prospects want extra information before they commit to making a purchase and competition for most goods and services is also rife.
To stand out from competitors, your B2B marketing strategy must be strong. Offering value at all stages of the user journey, utilising relevant, informational, educational and entertaining content. Due to the current climate, the strategy also needs to be adaptable to fit in with market conditions.
Keep reading to find out our top tips for achieving success in B2B marketing…
- Ensure your business is visible
- Optimisation
- Be as helpful as you can
- Offer your resources
- Be particular
Ensure your business is visible
Although focusing on short-term goals is great, focusing on long-term goals is even better. With short-term goals, businesses often make short-term wins through tailored sales activations, however, once these drop off you will just have to repeat the process again and so on, not boosting long-term visibility.
Focusing on brand building for the long-term such as SEO (otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation), social media and refreshing your website is extremely important. This will help to increase visibility and ensure your brand is at the forefront of your prospect's minds when they are in a position to purchase. Being at the right place, at the right time is crucial.
Optimisation
Another way to ensure your business is visible is to optimise your website through technical and on-page SEO. Don't forget to optimise meta descriptions, alt-text, images, site speed and structured data on your website. As well as off-page SEO which includes social sharing and external linking, which happen off your website.
Be as helpful as you can
Be as helpful as you can be but without being a nuisance. You may think that showing up everywhere will make your prospects buy from you, however often this is not the case. Your B2B marketing tactics should be adding value to your consumers, rather than just showing up for the sake of it.
Being helpful also means being memorable and this often includes being somewhere where a prospect can turn to, when they have a question they need answering. Rather than just using the sell, sell, sell method.
Offering value to your customers is a great way to stand out from the crowd, your content should be insightful and be what they genuinely want to see, whether that be educational or entertaining long or short-form pieces of content.
Be particular
Often B2B campaigns may not succeed because they are not fully focusing on the customer or their pain points. Campaigns that only focus on the product or service do not tend to work effectively. Competition is so high and it's possible that other businesses may have a better offering than yours. Therefore, putting your customers at the heart of everything you do will increase your chance of reaching success.
Offer your resources
Producing a considerable amount of content is needed to be successful in B2B marketing, this ensures that your content strategy is consistent and your prospects receive a nice flow of your brand messaging but not too much.
The majority of people will begin their research online, through websites, social media, ebooks and blogs, before even considering getting in contact with a salesperson. In fact, most people would actually prefer not to talk to a salesperson and would prefer to utilise all online and offline resources instead.
Videos, infographics, educational blogs, guides and many other pieces of content should sit on your website to offer value and all of the information customers need to make a decision. This content can also be repurposed across other channels such as social media, or Youtube. Have you just recorded a video guide? Why not repurpose this into a blog? Have you just written a long-form blog? Why not break it into several social media posts?
Repurposing content means you can create more of it but without any added effort, offering more value to the customer.
Stay organised
When it comes to B2B, there is a lot going on, so it's vital that you stay organised. You should probably plan a year-long strategy that is split into quarters or any period of time that matches your campaigns. Make note of tactics and plan out your content calendar to keep on top of posts and deadlines.
Ensure everything is mapped out, but don't forget to allow some flexibility to manage what is working and what isn't. Make note of your goals, strategy and tactics to achieve them.
These are just a handful of marketing tactics that can help your business to reach B2B success, there are many more to help reach your goals. Get in touch with us today and we can assist you with more tactics to help you achieve success.
