Essential B2B Marketing Strategies encompass a dynamic array of techniques crucial for navigating today’s competitive marketplace. From broadening brand visibility to nurturing leads and optimizing online presence, these strategies are essential for firms aiming not just to keep pace, but to excel. This article dives into ten fundamental strategies designed to equip your firm with the tools needed to thrive in the evolving landscape of B2B marketing. To learn more about the essential B2B marketing strategies to grow your business, continue reading.
When some firms think of B2B marketing strategies, they think primarily of direct and outbound techniques—marketing messages that you might send straight to clients or prospective buyers. In this approach, the goal is to be compelling and persuasive enough that the audience responds to the offer and seriously considers your services.
Techniques like these certainly have a place in your marketing tool belt. But the world of B2B marketing strategies has expanded, and the behavior of professional services buyers has changed. Today’s buyers are nearly as likely to turn to search engines for answers to their work-related challenges as they are to ask a colleague or connection for a referral.
This evolving marketplace has broadened the range of B2B marketing strategies at your disposal. So staying competitive today means taking full advantage of a wide spectrum of strategies.
You may wonder, though, which ones actually work in today’s hyper-competitive environment? In this article, we will explore ten fundamental B2B marketing strategies that will not only help your firm keep up, but help you get ahead. First let’s define exactly what we mean by B2B marketing strategy, including examples of how one can be deployed at different stages of the marketing funnel.
What is B2B Marketing Strategy?
B2B marketing strategy is the carefully selected set of techniques a firm uses to reach, nurture and sell its products and services to businesses in its target audience. Buyers are often c-suite or director-level professionals at other companies. This makes B2B marketing different from other kinds of marketing.
One key difference is that when businesses buy from other businesses the sales cycle tends to be longer—often weeks or months, and sometimes years. Buyers are trying to solve complex business challenges, and the solutions can be expensive, often requiring a great deal of time and customization to complete. As a result, many companies approach the selection process with care and deliberation. So a B2B marketing strategy needs to address all stages of the buyer journey. Let’s explore how this looks practically with some examples.
B2B Marketing Examples
We simplify the concept of B2B marketing by thinking of it as a three-tiered funnel. In this section we’ll explain each tier and provide examples of how B2B marketing techniques fit into the mix.
At the top tier of the marketing funnel you have a potential universe of buyers who are generally unaware of your product and service offerings. B2B marketing activity at this top tier employs techniques that broaden the visibility of your brand and attract the right kind of leads to engage further with your brand. These leads could be potential buyers, referral sources, or other influencers who could amplify your visibility.
An example of B2B marketing at the top of the funnel might be having one or more experts from your firm attend, network at, and speak at a top industry conference where your firm’s potential buyers gather. Another example is submitting a series of articles to an online publication that’s widely read by your target audience. Remember, the goal of B2B marketing at the top of the funnel is not to start closing deals! The objective is to increase your visibility, expose new people to your expertise and provide a pathway for leads to take the next step of engagement.
Speaking of engaging your potential buyers, that’s what the middle tier of the B2B marketing funnel is all about! If there is one section of the funnel that is underutilized, it’s this one. Marketers can be tempted to rush potential buyers into a sales pitch. But not all buyers are ready to make a purchasing decision today—in fact, many will be months or years away. So the middle of the funnel is where B2B marketers focus on engaging and nurturing their audience over a long period of time.
A common middle-funnel B2B marketing approach is to supply interested parties with insightful and practical educational materials. Webinars are a great example of middle of the funnel B2B marketing. In a live webinar, a potential buyer can experience your firm’s leading experts in a no-pressure environment where they can learn and ask questions. If they are ready to take the next step, it’s easy to reach out and speak to someone on your team. Another common middle-funnel tactic is email marketing. To demonstrate your thought leadership and nurture your contacts over time, you can send them relevant educational material—topical e-newsletters, blog posts, white papers and guides. If you are able to segment your list by industry or area of interest, this technique becomes even more powerful. Most people are more receptive to receiving helpful information like this than a hard offer (though there is a time and place for those, as well).
Finally, a buyer reaches the bottom of the B2B marketing funnel when they are ready to buy—though not necessarily from you! More often than not, they are evaluating a variety of options. Often they raise their hand and indicate that they are ready to speak with a representative from your firm about one or more of your services. We consider this moment a true B2B marketing lead. At this stage of the funnel, B2B marketers are responsible for preparing those who close business deals in their organization with the materials they need to communicate clearly and persuasively to the buyer. Examples of these materials might include pitch decks, qualifications packages and case studies.
Now that we’ve defined what B2B marketing is and how a B2B marketer needs to consider all three tiers of the funnel, let’s explore the ten essential B2B marketing strategies you can implement to help your firm get ahead of the competition.
1. RESEARCH
Research is the bedrock of any modern marketing program. From marketplace research to brand research, detailed scientifically conducted studies will help you make more informed decisions. They’ll give you an objective basis for your marketing and provide valuable baselines for measuring your results.
By conducting research, you’ll know your clients better—which positions you to serve them better. Market research also gives you insight into how your processes are performing. You’ll discover which aspects of your firm are performing most successfully and develop a better understanding of which services you should offer.
The impact of research is clear. Our own studies on the impact of research have shown that firms that conduct systematic research on their prospects and clients grow three to ten times faster and are up to two times more profitable than peers that don’t pursue research.
2. NICHE-DRIVEN STRATEGY
One of the most powerful marketing strategies is specialization and niche targeting. Our research has repeatedly shown that the fastest-growing firms tend to be specialists in a carefully targeted niche. Target an area of the industry that you understand thoroughly, a space in which you can become an indisputable expert and leader.
Specialization makes all of your marketing efforts easier, because it helps you define exactly what you do and tangibly distinguishes you from the competition. A specialization is a differentiator that proves itself.
3. A HIGH PERFORMANCE WEBSITE
In today’s professional services marketplace, your firm’s website is one of your most crucial assets. It is much more than a digital billboard or brochure, as some firms believed in the past. Instead, a successful modern website is the hub of a firm’s online presence and a place where visitors can sample a firm’s expertise before even talking with anyone.
Your website is a critical tool for building visibility. Buyers today go online to find service providers. To have a chance at winning their business, you must have a website that can be found in search. At the same time, your website must demonstrate your firm’s expertise and have clear, differentiated messaging that convinces visitors that your firm is credible, impressive and a good fit.
Our research paints a clear picture of the importance of a professional services firm’s website. In fact, 80% of people look at website when checking out service providers—the most commonly used information source by far.
And as new visitors reach your site, robust educational content and carefully targeted offers can drive leads closer and closer to a buying event, eventually bringing qualified leads straight to you. The process of nurturing leads through content is illustrated in the funnel graphic we discussed earlier in this article.
A second component of your website you need to consider is design. The look and feel of your site can influence your audience’s perceptions, aid recall, and differentiate your firm from competitors.
The power of design to engage audiences is often under appreciated — which means it offers a tremendous opportunity to set firms apart and convey the credibility firms needs to thrive.
Finally, another increasingly essential consideration for your website is its usability across a wide range of devices, including mobile. Responsive design, which allows your website to adapt to suit a user’s device, has become a key feature as more people use mobile devices to do business.
4. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
As we alluded to in #3 above, your target audience has to be able to find your website for it to be effective. That’s where search engine optimization plays an important role.
In our studies of the best performing organizations, most high-growth firms rate SEO as a critical digital marketing technique. And in a recent High Growth Study, we saw that higher levels of SEO maturity was correlated with a greater proportion of digital leads. This same study showed a similar connection between higher SEO maturity and increased profitability, most likely because digital leads usually cost less to produce.
Though SEO is a complex and evolving discipline, it ultimately consists of two primary components.
On-site SEO incorporates targeted keyword phrases into your content to communicate concepts that you want prospects to associate with your firm—and use to find you in online search. These keyword phrases typically focus on ideas related to your services and expertise.
The purpose of on-site SEO is to communicate to search engines what your website is about. This allows search engines to produce more relevant results to searchers. And when audiences search for some area of your expertise, they’ll be more likely to find you.
Off-site SEO takes the form of links to your website, either through outside engagement or guest articles in other publications, for example. Think of these links as votes of confidence in your site (though some votes—from highly reputable sources, for instance, count more than others). These links work to increase your site’s authority as a widely recognized leader on your topic.
As more high-authority and relevant websites link to your website, search engines will begin to see your site as more credible—resulting in higher rankings.
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Original article published on hingemarketing.com
