Good marketing is like oxygen. It keeps your business breathing by letting potential customers know it exists.
But in today’s rapidly evolving business ecosystem, getting this oxygen is becoming increasingly difficult.
Between creative demand, resource constraints, and keeping up with change, marketers often feel suffocated and end up scrambling to develop an effective strategy.
However, more often than not, the problem lies with your marketing approach.
You see, in marketing, there is no one size fits all. Depending on your target audience, your marketing method has to vary.
For instance, marketing to individual customers and marketing to businesses are two completely different things and require their own set of techniques.
Hence, there exist separate domains – B2C (Business-to-Customer) and B2B (Business-to-Business) Marketing.
In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into B2B marketing and discuss how it differs from B2C marketing, top B2B marketing strategies, and emerging trends to help you develop the best B2B marketing plan.
Table of Contents
What Is B2B Marketing?
How Is B2B Marketing Different From B2C Marketing?
Top 10 B2B Digital Marketing Strategies
Emerging Trends in B2B Marketing
The Bottom Line
What Is B2B Marketing?
First things first, B2B marketing is directed toward a business. It is employed by businesses selling to other businesses looking to drive results by influencing potential customers.
The purpose of B2B marketing is to make other businesses aware of your brand, showcase the value of your product/service, and convert them into customers.
Digitalization in B2B Marketing
The digital age has changed the way marketers and B2B audiences communicate.
According to a report by Gartner, 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and suppliers will occur in digital channels by 2025.
Moreover, B2B purchase decisions now involve more stakeholders than ever. And roughly half of these are millennials.
So, the B2B buying process has transitioned from a sales-led process of uninformed buyers to a marketing-led process with highly informed buyers.
Modern B2B buyers are educating themselves through research, often conducted online. This research further leads their buying journey.
Another report revealed that over 70% of B2B decision-makers prefer remote or digital interactions. In fact, a whopping 60% of them find it more convenient to buy online and 62% also reorder online.
Without a doubt, digital is now leading the B2B way, and employing the right B2B digital marketing strategies will be key.
How Is B2B Marketing Different From B2C Marketing?
Here’s a table explaining the differences between B2B and B2C marketing:
As you can see, B2B and B2C marketing differ according to the needs, interests, and pain points of their target audience. To reach your specific business audience, you need to implement specific B2B marketing strategies.
Top 10 B2B Digital Marketing Strategies
Before we dive into the different types of B2B marketing strategies, let’s first understand the concept of B2B marketing through a three-tiered funnel.
At the awareness stage, you have a potential flood of people who don’t know about your company, product, or service. At this top tier, you need to employ techniques that broaden brand visibility and attract the right kind of leads to your business.
An example of this is TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content such as blog posts, social media posts, infographics, and videos.
The next tier – engagement, is all about establishing and nurturing audience connections. In the B2B sales cycle, brand relationships are important for purchasing decisions. Offering insightful and helpful resources at this stage is an effective marketing move.
For example, MOFU (middle-of-the-funnel) content consists of webinars, eBooks, and survey reports.
At the conversion stage, your prospects are ready to make their purchase decision. They have already weighed their options and are ready to speak with a sales rep. Hence, BOFU (bottom-of-the-funnel) content such as events, consultations, and product demos works the best here.
Now, let’s look at the top B2B digital marketing strategies to sway your audiences at each of these stages.
1. Conduct In-Depth Market Research
Research is the bedrock of any marketing effort. Detailed research will help you get valuable insights about your target audience, niche market, and brand competitors.
This will allow you to make more informed decisions and understand what works best for your business. Here are some steps to conduct effective market research.
To dive deeper into B2B digital marketing, check out our resource center.
2. Segment Your Target Audience
Audience segmentation is an effective way to discover and define who your target audience is.
By distinguishing your ideal customer segment, you’ll be able to tailor your messaging in a way that resonates with them.
This will help you save time and resources and get a better ROI on your efforts.
3. Create a Website
Websites are a given for businesses today. But having a high-performing and dynamic website is what makes the difference.
Your company website should showcase your industry expertise and establish you as an authority.
Adding new content regularly can help you offer solutions to potential customers. The website must have a way to generate leads and capture customer information.
Also, the B2B website should:
Explore more about effective website creation with a holistic guide to a winning website strategy.
4. Utilize Search Engine Optimization and Content Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you rank higher on search engine results.
There are various ways to do SEO that help improve your website visibility and rankings.
However, a combination of SEO with quality content can get you noticed by search engines faster.
Regular blogging and multimedia content are effective ways of increasing awareness and building engagement.
Thought leadership content and videos do particularly well for B2B content marketing.
5. Integrate Online and Offline Marketing
Online and offline go hand in hand in the marketing world. To get the best results, integrate the two.
This will help you enhance your reach and provide superior customer experiences.
Here are some ways to integrate online and offline B2B marketing:
6. Tap Into Social Media Marketing
According to reports, 83% of B2B marketers use social media marketing for their business.
It is a valuable channel to drive brand engagement and build audience relationships.
Although there are multiple platforms available, LinkedIn is the top platform to engage B2B audiences, followed by Twitter and Facebook.
Here are some content ideas you can use to post on social media:
Check out the Benefits & Strategies for B2B Lead Generation on LinkedIn.
7. Consider PPC Campaigns
SEO, content marketing, and social media are all inexpensive ways to market your business.
But they can take time to deliver results. For quick results, investing in PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns is a great option.
The best part about PPC campaigns is that you only have to pay when action is taken, in this case, the user clicking on your link.
However, some platforms also charge you for impressions and engagement.
Using a paid media campaign tracker will help you monitor spend and results to budget, accordingly.
8. Invest in Marketing Automation and CRM
Marketing Automation: Marketing automation utilizes software to streamline marketing processes and eliminate repetitive tasks. It brings together marketing channels into a single centralized system for creating, managing, and measuring campaigns.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution helps you track, organize, and manage customer activities in one place. It serves as a database for customer information which helps reduce administrative overhead.
9. Harness Analytics and Reporting
Measuring marketing activities is as important as executing them. This gives you a clear understanding of what’s working and what needs improvement.
Use any free or low-cost analytics tool to analyze marketing efforts. If you have a Google account, you can simply tap into Google Analytics 4.
Alternatively, you can use reporting tools that come in-built with your marketing platforms.
10. Test and Optimize Regularly
Most good marketing is trial and error. Continuously test your efforts in order to get optimal results.
You can test variations of content, design, and functionality to fine-tune your website and messaging.
A/B testing emails and landing pages can help determine which variant performs better for a given conversion goal.
Accordingly, you can adjust and build upon the results to achieve maximum performance.
Emerging Trends in B2B Marketing
Just like the B2B landscape, trends in the domain keep changing. Based on market reports and speculations, here are some of the major trends that we see emerging:
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has many applications in marketing. It aids marketers in creating personalized experiences, fine-tuning SEO, and streamlining customer service.
With advancements in this technology, it can also be used to analyze data and improve automation for generating quality leads and conversions.
Purpose-Driven Branding
B2B marketing is based heavily on brand trust and relationships. Businesses want to purchase from a brand whose values align with theirs.
Adopting a purpose-driven brand strategy would be on the cards for businesses at present. An empathy-based, all-inclusive, and authentic brand will win the marketplace as well as customers’ hearts.
Influencer Marketing
According to reports, 86% of B2B brands find success with influencer marketing. It is one trend that will see exponential growth in the coming years.
This is because B2B marketing needs more power to convince audiences.
And influencers with a large number of followers have the credibility to drive users and inculcate brand loyalty.
Intent Monitoring
With changing customer behavior, marketing teams now need to take a larger role across the buyer life cycle. Predicting customer intent early and accurately makes it more efficient.
Having insights into businesses that need your solutions can facilitate lead generation and drive conversions.
Human-to-Human Marketing
Human-to-Human (H2H) marketing is based on the fact that every marketing interaction between a business and other businesses is essentially between humans.
Hence, the approach is now shifting from benefits-focused, product-based marketing to value-focused, attraction-based marketing.
The Bottom Line
B2B digital marketing is a vast field. While tools and platforms may change, fundamental strategies for connecting with potential customers remain the same. Now that you have a good grasp of them, it’s time to implement them in your business.
Need Help Executing Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy? We Can Help.
At Grazitti, our digital marketing team has served global clientele ranging from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies, and non-profit organizations for their search, social media, paid marketing, and analytics needs.
Our strategic partnerships with technology pioneers such as Google, Microsoft, HubSpot, and Adobe, combined with our innovative approach to deliver result-oriented solutions have helped companies transform their business and save millions.
To know more, just drop us a line at [email protected] and we’ll take it from there.
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