Key Components of a B2B Marketing Strategy
Let’s say you’re a manufacturer looking to get your product in the hands of an e-commerce business owner. You sell a skincare line and have noticed your niche performing particularly well in the United States, but you can’t seem to capture the attention of the right CEO. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. A B2B company needs an effective marketing strategy to get their service or product in front of business owners willing to pay.
Today we’ll be discussing key components of a high converting B2B marketing strategy and ways you can drive consistent traffic to your website.
Implement Content Marketing
Content marketing is offering educational pieces of information about the industry your target audience is interested in. This can be in the form of infographics, podcasts, blogs, and so much more.
This marketing strategy focuses more on education and engagement than selling. Content marketing is all about influencing purchasing behavior by showcasing company credibility and keeping your audience intrigued every step of the way.
For example, if you’re a web developer that wants to target e-commerce business owners in need of a website build, you could write blog posts about high converting e-commerce designs and different customizable code for Shopify. This would demonstrate your expertise, hook the right reader, and land you a promising lead.
According to Content Marketing Institute, B2B teams with the highest success rates spend 40% of their marketing budget on content marketing. That’s almost half of the entire budget on content marketing alone.
Buffer is a great example of a company that executes successful content marketing campaigns. Buffer offers social media tools for small businesses, and they started out blogging a couple of times a day about different marketing and social media tips until they gained their first 100,000 users.
Currently, they have a few different blogs, a high converting email marketing strategy, and over 400,000 businesses using their service. They offered proof of their knowledge and credibility, helped small business owners learn about marketing, and then gave those same owners a way to make their marketing processes faster and more efficient.
Utilize Social Media
Something a lot of B2B companies underestimate is the power of social media. There are four major platforms to build a social media presence on as of 2021- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
If you create and distribute bulk lash sets for cosmetic stores, a great place to create content and share it with your audience is Facebook. You can include original posts about your product to promote your brand, but you can also pick curated posts- content from other creators- that fall in the beauty niche to keep your followers engaged and interested. Another great option with Facebook is paid ads, and even small budgets of 10 dollars a day can get you a thousand more views from potential buyers. One of the perks of running paid social ads on Facebook is that your advertisement is placed on three separate platforms at once- Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.
Twitter is a great place to consistently post throughout the day with industry updates and educational content. If your target audience is small business owners looking for marketing help, you could tweet two or three times Monday through Friday about tips and tricks for social media growth and digital marketing. This establishes your brand as an expert in the field and drives more traffic to your website and services. Twitter is also designed for curated posts because you can retweet other creators’ tweets within your niche. The more variety you create on your feed, the more your followers will stay interested and talk about your brand.
LinkedIn is the most geared toward B2B marketing, and a lot of CEOs and company decision-makers use the platform. This is a great site to reach out to business owners and market your services or products through personalized direct messages. You can also create posts that showcase your expertise and there’s even a feature where you can list your services directly within LinkedIn. A lot of B2B companies use LinkedIn to send cold emails in the form of messages, and this is a very effective marketing technique as long as you aren’t being too spammy.
Youtube is one of the most popular social sites, with over 2 billion active users. If you’ve ever used this video streaming app, you probably know that most videos are monetized and you will see at least one adroll in a ten-minute video.
Youtube is a great platform to advertise your brand or product, and this marketing strategy doesn’t solely rely on ad spend. You could create a company channel and push out informational videos within your industry. Animation does really well on Youtube when it comes to educational content.
Statistics show that as many as 84% of CEOs use social media to make purchasing decisions, which means it’s a gold mine for B2B companies.
Master Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of increasing website awareness through the use of keywords and optimization processes. To shorten the explanation, it’s all about ranking on search engines, and you want to rank high.
A lot of businesses think that SEO is a standalone marketing strategy, but it’s actually comprised of a few different methods. As I’ve mentioned in my other blog post, User Generated Content, another asset you can add to your marketing strategy, will often drive more traffic to your website. When this happens, Google will see your site as valuable among users and place it on the first pages of the search engine.
Good SEO means naturally getting to that first page, which most people don’t scroll past when searching for products or services. SEO is all about utilizing keywords that are most searched for in your industry. For example, if you’re a SAAS company trying to push your software to marketing agencies, you would use keywords like marketing software or marketing automation.
A great way to enhance your SEO is by creating blog content with the right amount of keywords for your target audience. The more keywords you have optimized on your site, the easier it is to raise website awareness, but there is a certain window when it comes to correctly using keywords. Overuse can actually do more harm than good.
According to B2B Digital Marketers, 51% of organic searches lead consumers to B2B and B2C websites, whereas paid searches only make up 10% and social media only makes up 5%. That’s a huge difference, and there are so many more statistics to support implementing good SEO in your marketing strategy.
Bright Edge Research reported on a study that revealed 68% of online experiences start within the search engine.
Effective SEO drives traffic to your website and increases your chances of conversions. Imagine if you added this to all the other methods mentioned above.
Strive For Earned Media
One aspect of an effective marketing strategy that some B2B companies overlook is earned media, and it can make a huge impact. Earned media is any form of advertisement that isn’t paid for — this can be reviews, user generated content on social media, or even peer-to-peer referrals.
On social media platforms, user-generated content creates social proof that influences users buying behavior. This could be a photo with a brand specific hashtag featuring a certain product. When other users see this photo, they get curious and look through the hashtag, which features other users of your product or service.
This can build a long-lasting trust when people see other people enjoying your product. This can translate messages such as value and quality, which ultimately drives traffic and conversions.
Another great form of earned media are online reviews on Google My Business. This is what first pops up when business owners search for your company. These reviews can be positive or negative and greatly encourage purchases or cause businesses to overlook your service.
Lastly, peer-to-peer referrals are an awesome way to build customer retention and loyalty. If you’re offering a beneficial product or service that makes a business owner’s life easier, they’re going to talk about your company with other business owners in their network.
Word-of-mouth marketing is effective because the referrals are coming from somebody that the receiving person trusts. It is a valued opinion that holds weight, and it can greatly increase your site traffic, even if it doesn’t always lead to conversions.
The Conclusion
B2B marketing is as, if not more, important than B2C marketing. Every business has a need for various software, marketing services, or other products that make their business operating processes more efficient.
Utilize the methods mentioned above to increase site traffic, build a social presence that encourages conversions, and overall raise brand awareness.
