6 B2B Marketing Strategies to Get Your Business Off the Ground
In recent years, the marketplace and customer demands have both been evolving continuously, which has widened the scope of B2B marketing strategies. So, to stay relevant in today’s competitive landscape, you should explore and take advantage of the extensive range of B2B marketing strategies to reach and connect with prospects, which is the primary responsibility of a B2B marketer.
B2B marketing strategies are tactics adopted by companies to promote their products or services to another business or organization, unlike a B2C business, where companies sell their products or services to consumers directly.
Through B2B marketing, marketers try to reach out to their target audience and show them how effectively their product or service can resolve their pain points. You may wonder how this is different from B2C, as this is the primary objective of many B2C companies as well. The key difference is that in the B2B model, marketers also need to convince their target audience (stakeholders in companies) that the value proposition will be worth their money. You may have to deal with several people within an organization and convince them to close the deal. Even though this may sound like a daunting task, you can still close deals and market to business stakeholders without having to allocate a big budget for it.
6 B2B Marketing Strategies to Get Your Business Off the Ground
As a B2B owner or marketer, you have a plethora of options available at your disposal to scale your business effectively. Here are six B2B marketing strategies that will help you stand out in the crowd and get ahead of your competitors.
#1. Understand Your Market Through Research
Doing market research before implementing your marketing strategies is as important as doing pre-production work before shooting a movie. By doing in-depth market research, you will gain a deep understanding of your market, clients, and competitors.
Knowing your clients well and understanding their pain points is crucial – and this can be achieved by conducting thorough research. Market research also helps you determine your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing which aspects of your business are performing exceedingly well and which ones are not, will help you decide which services you should offer.
#2. Create an Attractive and Engaging Website
By now, every business from local dog walkers to global enterprises will have a website, since it is a crucial tool for building visibility. This shouldn’t be boring text on a page, though. Your brand’s website is an opportunity to display your expertise and make a name for yourself throughout the marketplace. If you want to stand any chance of winning your client’s business, they should be able to find your website whenever they search online to find service providers.
Creating a website alone does not guarantee leads. Content is key. Your website should have interesting, engaging, and educational content to attract prospects. Along with content, you should ensure that your website has a captivating visual design to help you stand out and influence your visitors’ perceptions.
However, while engaging visuals are important, they shouldn’t get in the way of functionality. The last thing you want is to be considered a business that puts style over substance.
#3. Leverage SEO for Lead Generation
Regardless of how attractive and captivating your website is, it might feel like a beautiful unexplored island if your target audience can’t find it. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play. If you’re not familiar with SEO by now, you should know this one thing: It is an extremely valuable and cost-effective way to reach your audience. SEO can play a crucial role in improving your website’s visibility and overall searchability.
Higher visibility results in more people viewing your website, increasing your online traffic, which in turn increases your chances of providing your product or service to a wider audience. In addition to this, SEO – especially when driven with high-quality, interesting content – builds brand trust and brand loyalty. These factors will ultimately lead to a large number of relevant websites with high domain authority adding links to your website. This will improve your website ranking tremendously as search engines begin to view your website as a credible and trustworthy source of information.
#4. Advertise Effectively – Especially on Social Media
“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” – Henry Ford
You may have worked hard to create a unique trailblazing product or service. Now, how will you make the world aware of what you’ve made? The answer is simple – through advertising. Advertising is a crucial tool for your business for promoting your products or services.
There are several platforms that you can use to advertise your brand; however, social media platforms are a common choice in the modern marketplace. Social media platforms are a regularly used source of information for many buyers. Social media marketing helps you gain audience insights, reach new clients, and connect with them quickly, ultimately boosting your marketing campaigns at a low entry cost.
For B2B businesses, LinkedIn and Facebook are the ideal options to advertise and market on effectively. LinkedIn in particular is B2B-centric, making it an ideal platform for B2B businesses to improve and maximize their reach to the right audience. As a B2B marketer, Linkedin should be your go-to option to introduce your business to potential clients and find your business partner.
#5. Use Retargeting Ads
As you strive to find new clients, you must also make sure to not ignore those who have already visited your website but didn’t make a purchase or sign up for a demo of your services. Retargeting allows you to track these clients across the web and show relevant ads to them. Retargeting ads are crucial, as the chances of converting a visitor who has already visited your website into a client are higher than those who haven’t visited your website yet. In other words, “warm” prospects are easier and cheaper to acquire than “cold” prospects.
Retargeting is incredibly powerful, but should be done with strategic intent. It’s important to understand that not every visitor who visits your website may be interested in what you have to offer. Some of them may have left after realizing that your product or service is not for them. Do not retarget these visitors.
You should instead retarget those who left your website due to other reasons beyond disinterest in what you have to offer. They could have any number of reasons. For instance, their business could have been in the middle of a cash flow crunch, or they may have wanted to do some research about your offering, or it could simply be that they were not in the right frame of mind to make a purchasing decision then.
The obvious question, then is this: How do you tell these types of visitors apart? This is where pixel-based retargeting comes into the picture. A person who is not interested in your product or service will not spend much time on your website; however, the ones who are interested will spend longer and may also look at various pages on your site. Pixel-based retargeting helps you determine how much time a visitor spent on your website and how many pages he or she visited. Based on this you can create a list of potential customers to retarget.
#6. Track the Right Sales Metrics
You may believe that you have a well-planned, solid B2B marketing strategy; however, for whatever reason, you’re not getting the results you want. It is important to track your sales and marketing metrics to know if your marketing strategy is working effectively or not.
Here are some key metrics that will help you track the effectiveness of your B2B marketing strategies.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC). This is a metric that helps you track how much money it costs your B2B company to acquire a buyer. You can determine the average amount of money your company spends to acquire a buyer.
- Buyer churn rate. The churn rate helps you track how many buyers have left your company during a particular timeline, specifically for service-based businesses. Once you have an idea of the rate at which clients have stopped doing business with your company, you should analyze and find out when they canceled the subscriptions, what it says about their problems, and take the necessary steps to fix the issue.
- Buyer retention rate. This B2B metric helps you determine how many clients have stayed with your company for an extended period of time.
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR). As a marketer, it is crucial to know the rate at which your revenue is growing. MRR helps you determine that and find out the return on investment (ROI) your company is getting for the expenditure it made.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned earlier, customer demands and the marketplace are constantly evolving, so you should not sit back and relax once these B2B marketing strategies have been implemented. Instead, you should constantly assess your strategies to see if there is any room for improvement.
Implementing the marketing strategies mentioned in this post is hardly impossible. Proper research work, smart thinking, patience, and perseverance will help you attract and convert potential clients for your business.