Business-to-business (B2B) marketing refers to the marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. Its major distinction from B2C marketing, is leaning toward customers.
The practices used by organizations to sell products or services to other businesses, are continually evolving and maintain their relevance and value. Businesses which keep up with these changes and use the latest tools and B2B marketing strategies can seize the most lucrative business opportunities and accomplish all their business goals.
Who is B2B Marketing For?
B2B marketing campaigns are focused on any individual who is the decision maker or who have control or influence on buying decisions. This can include a wide variety of job-titles and functions, from entry-level end-users all the way up to the C-Level executives.
How to create B2B Marketing Strategy?
Competition for acquiring customers, and retain their attention, is high. Carving out a B2B strategy that delivers results requires comprehensive planning, execution, and management. Let’s look at the methods B2B companies can stand out in a highly competitive market:
1. Account-based Marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategic marketing approach where major business accounts are marketed to directly, as part of one (compared to the standard one-to-many approach).
Where does ABM fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
An ABM strategy covers the entire marketing funnel. It tosses the funnel around. You identify specific clients your business wants to deal with first, and then start targeting them to build awareness, start conversations, and drive sales.
How to employ ABM effectively:
ABM is most effective if you’re working a small or niche audience with a high purchase power. For e.g., if you’re offering IoT software for auto manufacturing facilities, the market is perhaps small enough that you know precisely who you want to sell to – and acquiring a few accounts will produce a big increase in revenue. ABM is perfect choice for such campaigns.
2. Pay-per-click marketing
Pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing is still considered one of the best demand generation strategies to be used in B2B marketing. In simple words, PPC marketing can be described as a type of online advertising in which advertisers pay when users click their ads. Advertisers bid on the perceived value of a click in relation to the keywords, audience type and platforms on which it is created.
Where does PPC marketing fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
PPC marketing is best used for generating demand for products and services. It’s an effective way to reach an audience who is already searching for products & services. For e.g., if you sell a CRM for small businesses, you could target the 2,400 monthly Google searches for “CRM for small business” by running Google search ads on that keyword. Also, PPC marketing can be used to nurture contacts through your funnel through remarketing.
How to employ PPC effectively:
PPC marketing is the best strategy in generating demand by targeting an existing audience. If you realize that there is market demand for your product or service, PPC can be the best option.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a longer-term approach than PPC. SEO is a practice of boosting the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine page listings.
Where does SEO fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
B2B SEO falls exactly in the realm of building awareness. It’s a means to increase the number of website visitors. For e.g., Consider you sell custom ERP development service. If you rank for that search term, users will visit your website, learn about services offered by you, and possibly buy. SEO is a means to fill the top of the marketing funnel.
How to employ SEO effectively:
Like PPC, SEO is a best approach for reaching an established market. If there are a lot of searches for your services – or for closely related terms – SEO is worth the time and money invested.
Strategically, there are two main parts to any SEO strategy: On-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO includes content creation and updating of meta tags to improve ranking factors. Off-page SEO involves creating backlinks to enhance the domain authority of your website. Note that good SEO takes time, specifically if your B2B organization is relatively new in the market.
4. Social media marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) is the method of using social media platforms to create an audience, share stories, and take actions for a brand. SMM activities can be paid or organic.
It is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to create awareness about your brand, boost sales, and drive website traffic. This includes publishing relevant content on your social media profiles, listening to and connecting with your followers, analysing your results, and running social media ads.
Where does social media marketing fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
Social media marketing focuses on the filling the top of the marketing funnel. If it is done properly, SMM can be a very useful tool in building your audience.
How to employ social media marketing effectively:
Social media strategies vary extensively depending on your business and on what industry you’re operating in. Generally, the SMM approach should include the following steps:
Identifying the social media channels where prospective customers spend time.
Optimize these channels for your business, then start posting on them on a regular basis.
You might like to consider paid ads to increase your audience reach. And you should avoid the channels your target audience don’t use frequently.
5. Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the method of optimizing a website page so that visitors are more likely to take a required action. Content edits, call-to-action changes, button design, colour changes, A/B testing are the activities need to be taken care of in case of CRO. The entire point of optimizing CRO is to make sure a higher percentage of your visitors convert.
Where does CRO fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
CRO is a mid-marketing funnel approach. It’s not focused on driving more visitors to your website or building awareness for your product; its main objective is to drive visitors to take desired action on your website
How to employ CRO effectively:
To do CRO, you are required to clearly define what signifies a conversion on a webpage, so that you can optimize your activities to derive the required action. Basically, each page on your website should have a goal.
Additionally, CRO is most effective when you have data to use to optimize for the conversion. Without data, any changes you make to optimize conversion rate will simply be based on a hunch. To collect this data, you must have traffic. So, it is important to start building top of your marketing funnel first.
Once you have a desired goal and you have traffic visiting your website, start testing what works to have increased conversions. Make smart, data-informed alterations, and, with the time, you can see an upward trend in your conversion rate.
6. Email marketing
Email marketing is the very useful digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Successful marketing email campaigns convert prospects into customers and transform one-time buyers into loyal fans of your brand. It is used to create brand awareness and drive desired actions from prospects.
Where does email marketing fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
Email marketing can be useful for the entire B2B marketing funnel. For example, you can (and should) use email marketing to connect with existing clients or customers. However, it is commonly used in nurturing contacts to become clients.
How to employ email marketing effectively:
To start email marketing campaign, you need email ids to market to. You can do this by increasing your traffic through the strategies mentioned above, and then converting visitors into contacts. There are two main forms of email marketing. The first method is to send one-off emails, typically to a large segment of a list. The second method is to send automated campaigns (or drips) that starts conversations with the recipients.
Pro tip: Segmentation makes email campaign highly effective.
7. Sales support
Sales support can be explained as a variety of functions that help your sales representatives to concentrate on selling and closing deals.
Where does sales support fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
Sales support improves the bottom of the marketing funnel. If done well, it can help salespeople to turn a larger number of contacts into clients and customers.
How to employ sales support campaigns effectively:
Some SaaS (Software as a Service) companies operating at lower price points may not need sales support. Practically, sales support can take a range of ways.
8. Customer marketing
Customer marketing is type of marketing strategy that’s directed towards people who have already bought from you. It is built around activities intended to drive retention, loyalty, promotion, growth, and community participation for current customers. This strategy is different from marketing with the objective of acquiring new customers, depends greatly on maximizing effective customer relationships.
How does customer marketing fit into the B2B marketing funnel?
This strategy focuses on the very bottom of the funnel – after conversion to client.
How to employ customer marketing effectively:
Customer marketing is a broad term – essentially any form of communication with existing customers could fall under this umbrella. But there are a few tips that nearly always apply in customer marketing.
Firstly, you should be doing customer marketing as existing customers can be easier to convert for repeat purchases or upsells.
Secondly, you must always promote new offerings. If you’re launching a new product line, for example, your existing customers will be a great audience to begin with.
Thirdly, segmentation is critical here. If you offer a varied range of services, your messaging should alter based on which customers you’re communicating with.
We hope that the methods mentioned above are beneficial as you move forward with your B2B marketing. If you’re looking for additional information or help executing effective marketing, contact us now. AdGrip Marketing is here to help you seize these opportunities and help you with the execution of a B2B digital marketing strategy that creates real business impact.
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