While strategies for marketing directly to consumers are more prevalent, marketing for companies that sell products or services to other companies can be quite challenging.
B2B, or business-to-business marketing, needs extensive research. It is the process of not only creating outbound channels but also generating inbound funnels that lead to a smoother sales process.
B2B marketing entails the continuous promotion of one business’s product or service through multiple mediums, such as email marketing, PPC advertising, SEO, Content Production, Content Placement, Events, and Social Media Marketing.
As for B2C (or Business-to-Consumer) marketing that targets to the consumer directly, the end result is achievable differently compared to B2B marketing. With B2B marketing, the content tends to be more informative and analytical due to the importance of ROI (Return on Investment) around the product and services for corporate decision-makers.
The prominence of this specific marketing strategy has begun to rise over the years due to its high success rate for each business involved and the dire need to beat competitors. Businesses generate serious buzz over their offerings by establishing their market share through consistent B2B Marketing.
Here are five facts about B2B marketing that you should seriously consider to further scale your business.
1. Content is everything in B2B marketing
According to Digital Authority Partners, one of the key facts of a successful B2B marketing strategy within a company is aligning the content to the sales activities with your goals. In other words, B2B marketers must be able to understand the needs of both the targeted businesses and consumers, as there are layers to this process.
For a truly engaging pitch, B2B marketing has to include the behavioral lens of the customer through the eyes of the sales and marketing team.
In fact, most highly successful companies using a comprehensive B2B marketing plan, have sales and marketing teams collaborating in order to use content to its highest capability.
Content marketing is not only super effective, but also an affordable strategy compared to other marketing models that consume marketing dollars at a high rate. The cost of content marketing is approximately half of traditional marketing and generates at least three times as many leads.
B2B marketing’s most essential factors are creating trust and acquiring customers. Marketing through quality content does volumes for your brand identity. High-quality content also helps a company rank higher, and when it’s created in quantity you will get superb results.
Since businesses are more rational and understanding of the marketing world compared to consumers, content marketing is an essential portion of the B2B marketing as a whole.
2. Personal Relationships are very important
Due to competition within the B2B marketing world, personal relationships between companies are crucial for success. With a developed level of trust, business-to-business suppliers are able to maintain a handful of loyal customers.
Unlike the business-to-consumer marketing model, B2B marketing focuses on the quality of the relationships, and therefore the quality of the service sold, rather than the number of customers in total. The prime focus is on securing long-term relationships.
The significance of personal relationships in B2B marketing ultimately increased by face-to-face connections between representatives of each respective business involved.
With that in mind, trade shows and overall technical knowledge of the product advertised is crucial for B2B marketing. Trade shows have become the number one promotional tool in the United States of America for business-to-business Companies.
Although personal relationships and connections are important for any marketing strategy, B2B Marketing sincerely thrives off of it more than any other model within the business sphere.
3. Technology needs to be incorporated
Once the content marketing side is working like a well-oiled machine, you have to utilize applicable technology to its highest advantages in order to boost the sale of products advertised to other businesses.
Social media, blogs, emails, can be maximized using tech platforms for targeted distribution to potential clients.
With emails, it is important to collect emails through a variety of channels like landing pages, events, and data scraping. At the same time, it is important to make sure you are not spamming anyone, so use appropriate software.
For blogs, you have to make sure you are using high-authority websites to place your content. This is very important for your ranking.
In terms of social media, you have to maintain your brand well, align your messaging so it is in sync on all platforms and constantly create impressions to generate an inbound.
For all publishing platforms, you need to make sure your content calendars are updated ahead of time and that your internal team or your agency is paying close attention to this process.
Technology has made its mark throughout the globe, and a B2B Marketeer needs to stay on top of all tech trends within the industry.
4. Experimentation is encouraged
Similar to any marketing strategy, B2B marketing can benefit from some experimentation in order to provide insight into the user experience and the brand as a whole.
Either through digital ways or new content, experimentation can create a new strategic path that a company can design.
For example, MailChimp is a business that utilized B2B marketing to its fullest extent, by welcoming experimentation in their marketing campaigns.
In order to recover lost traffic, the company’s email marketing platform ran paid search campaigns with slight alterations of their brand name due to the possibility of customers mishearing or misspelling their brand name.
Using the mispronunciation as a creative device skyrocketed MailChimp’s business since customers became more curious about the overall company and its mission.
While this specific example is a huge experiment that included a large campaign, other B2B organizations can make a smaller, yet still effective, plan.
Using specific social media features, such as Instagram stories, can still bring about awareness and interest of the company. Even though this specific choice is smaller in comparison, the tactic is still experimental and positively effective if you A/B test results and create a specific strategy.
5. B2B Buyers are more demanding
Overall, using B2B marketing is quite different compared to other marketing strategies, specifically because the organizations on the other end of the stick are more demanding than the average consumer.
Decision-markers have a high level of responsibility in purchasing the right product or service for their company. Hence, they limit their risk, require a standard of quality in their chosen product or service, and want to be able to foresee profits.
Since most businesses in a B2B transaction have to buy products at scale and spend a lot all at once, they expect more in return for their decision.
While more advantageous than the business-to-consumer marketing tactic in some ways, B2B marketing does require more content, research, and quality.
Overall, it is important to have the right combination of all of the strategies listed above to obtain positive results. Content is really King when it comes to B2B Marketing, and it is the one common performer working across all marketing channels.