Fundamentally, B2B marketing has always prioritized solving unique, often complex, business problems with rational, data-driven messaging. While industries have all experienced a degree of digital transformation in recent years, that fundamental necessity to share ways to successfully solve business challenges still drives the best of today’s B2B marketing strategies.
Why Do I Need Marketing?
“If you build it, they will come.” Fans of the baseball movie classic, Field of Dreams will remember that quote very well. Sadly, it does not apply to your business website. Having even the most outstanding web presence in your field will not guarantee your success if no-one knows your site is out there. Effective marketing helps build impactful connections with your customers and prospects.
According to Exploding Topics, there are over 1.1 billion websites live today - and counting. With so much competition, it’s necessary to dedicate effort and resources to stand out. Whether you’re simply letting your customers know you’re there, strengthening brand recognition, or creating positive brand experiences in any other way, effective B2B marketing will increase site traffic and conversions.
Where Should I Begin?
Marketing encompasses a lot. Options, strategies, and opinions are plentiful. Focus first on the low-hanging fruit, the low effort opportunities with high reward. Take a look at the B2B-focused ideas below to get started.
Invest Time, Effort, and Maybe Some Budget Funds, in SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is all about helping your website appear on search engine results pages, for example on Google, when a user searches for a word or phrase related to your business. Improving your SEO is key to making sure users can find your website. Improving your SEO improves website traffic and ultimately, conversion. For local B2B businesses, local listings and location keywords can help you stand out in your market where it matters most.
Study Your Competitors
Look to your competitors for ideas on where you can improve. Choose competitors that you feel you can learn something from in terms of their marketing tactics. What kind of tactics are they using? Do they have social media pages? Do they rank highly in search engines for keywords that you value? Try signing up to competitors’ mailing lists to see the quality of their email campaigns and how frequently they choose to send.
Are there goliaths in the market that are competing for your business, like Amazon, Grainger, etc.? What can you learn from their approach? What can you do better and more personalized for your customers? Are there untapped opportunities in niche markets?
Know Your Customers and Their Online Habits
Knowing your customers extremely well is essential to successful marketing. Use your boots-on-the-ground team (Sales, customer service, call center) to learn customer pain points, likes, dislikes, and more. Do your customers often make use of the web? Do they regularly check their email? Would direct mail help you stand out? Think about what your customers want to receive, not just what you want to send them.
Create a Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy will help you plan for the season or year ahead.
- First of all, you will need to define your main objectives/goals for your website at the center of your digital presence.
- Remember there are two target segments you are marketing to – existing customers, and prospective customers.
- Plan out the timing/cadence for digital marketing campaigns: when you plan to write blog posts, social media posts, whitepapers, emails, or articles.
- Mark any trade shows or events on your strategy calendar that inform your marketing campaign priorities, workflow, and timeline.
- Assign marketing tasks to team members. Decide whether marketing is something you can effectively tackle in-house or identify a respected agency partnership.
- Make an effort to personalize user journeys within marketing touchpoints specific to your business goals and segmented user types. Plan optimized brand experiences for your audience(s).
Take an Omnichannel Approach
Omnichannel marketing refers to creating a seamless experience for your audience(s) across all channels – from your website, email campaigns, web listings, social media business profiles, search engine ads/marketing and other digital channels to traditional signage, snail mail, and print advertising. Omnichannel does not have to mean “all” channels. Meet your target audience(s) where they are most likely to engage with your B2B brand.
Consistency in terms of branding and messaging is key to omnichannel marketing success. Aim to make the process of engaging with your brand effortless for your customers.
Need Marketing Help?
If you need help getting started or don’t have the capacity to manage your marketing alone, Americaneagle.com is here to help. Contact us today!
