The Complete Guide to B2B Marketing
Business to Business, or B2B, marketing is a method that requires unique strategies and applications to achieve the best results. After years of putting best practices into action, we’re sharing our strategies to help you understand and drive successful B2B marketing campaigns.
What is B2B Marketing?
Let’s start with the basics. What is B2B marketing, and how does it differ from B2C, or Business to Consumer, marketing? LinkedIn defines B2B marketing as the marketing of products or services to other companies and organizations. This type of marketing targets the demands, interests and challenges of individuals purchasing on behalf of their organization. B2C marketing targets the individual consumer purchasing based on their individual needs, interests and challenges. The critical difference between the two is in B2B marketing, the organization is the customer, whereas, in B2C marketing, the individual is the customer.
Types of B2B Marketing
There are a plethora of B2B marketing locations, but here are a few to focus on as you begin your B2B marketing strategy:
1. Social Media: The power of a good social media strategy should not be overlooked when it comes to B2B marketing. According to IDG, 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Suite executives use social media when making a purchase. By mixing in organic and paid advertisements, you will reach and engage prospective customers on platforms they routinely use.
2. Search or Pay Per Click (PPC): Running PPC campaigns allows you to place your content in front of already engaged audiences that have shown interest in a certain keyword or search phrase via search engines and other advertising platforms. An effective PPC strategy will not only increase your brand awareness, but if done properly, it will also help bring new leads to your business.
3. Email Marketing: Implementing email marketing into your B2B digital marketing strategy is essential to stay competitive within your industry. With 93% of B2B marketers using email, it’s more important than ever to make your emails stand out! Check out our email marketing blog to learn more.
4. Blogs: Blogs, like the one you are reading right now, are essential to any marketing strategy to provide organic visibility and drive traffic to your website. By implementing a regularly published blog on your website, you will consistently offer value to your customers outside of the individual products you are promoting.
B2B Marketing Best Practices
Before you begin running your campaign, there are a few steps you need to take to set yourself up for success.
1. Develop an Overarching Vision & Objectives: Clearly define what you want to accomplish and what success means to you in a measurable, quantitative way.
2. Define Your Audience: Evaluate who you need to engage to achieve your objectives and then strategize the best ways to reach that audience effectively over time.
3. Identify Marketing Channels: Map your goals and audience to the available and relevant channels. Verify that your audience is well represented on the selected platform so you can connect with them in a meaningful way. More on this below.
4. Determine KPIs: Establish metrics to measure your success, a plan to evaluate these metrics over time and a potential strategy to shift if things don’t go as planned.
After you have developed the campaign vision, goal and objectives, determined your key performance indicators (KPIs), defined your target audience and identified your marketing channels, you’re ready to start generating content. Here are some things to consider as you begin drafting content for your next campaign:
● Stay Human: It’s important to remember that while B2B marketing focuses on marketing to businesses, you are trying to reach actual people within the company. Like any other consumer, these individuals are driven by emotional and cognitive motivations.
● Keep Your Audience In Mind: Just like in B2C marketing, content should be tailored to the target audience. Take the time to develop unique content that will resonate with your ideal customer.
● Thought Leadership: By integrating the best and most profound answers to your customers’ biggest questions into your marketing content, you will improve brand trust and loyalty within your community.
● Channel-Specific Content: To create a positive customer experience, you want to create content that fits thematically with where the content is viewed. For example, a shorter video with engaging copy is better suited for a formal LinkedIn post, while a longer, more descriptive video would likely perform better on Youtube.
The final step in ensuring your B2B marketing efforts are paying off is to analyze and optimize your campaigns consistently. In the simplest terms, you want to understand what is performing well, what isn’t and why. This data will offer insight into the customer’s journey and provide actionable insights to consult as you make adjustments to your campaign.
Is your messaging too formal for your audience? Are you advertising on the wrong channels for your brand? Do you fall flat on inspiring content? Where does your audience hesitate to convert?
As seasoned B2B marketers, we know the ins and outs of the B2B marketing world. At nContext, we see the value in working directly with our clients to develop the best campaign strategies to reach the desired audience. If you would like to learn more about our B2B Digital Marketing Services, head to our services page. Or, you can email info@ncontext.com.