5 B2B Marketing Challenges (& How to Overcome Them)

Marketing to another business is not easy. Business heads know the tricks of the trade, making business to business marketing a top challenge for even the most seasoned marketers.

Marketers face a variety of B2B marketing challenges as the world of inbound marketing changes rapidly, forcing them to adapt, learn and grow. Despite the issues marketers have to tackle, the right tools and techniques can help them solve their problems and in turn grow traffic and revenue.

Here are five B2B marketing challenges and how to overcome them:

1. Generating Leads

According to the HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report for 2017, generating leads was the No. 1 challenge for marketers. It’s not enough to attract visitors to their channels, marketers must provide content offers that engage consumers and make it worth visitors’ time to fill out contact forms.

Not only do marketers have to come up with exciting content, B2B consumers must get the push they need to take meaningful action for marketers to meet business goals.

There are several approaches to improve lead generation, including exploring new markets, coming up with keywords targeting a wider audience and improving your existing content.

Delve Into New Markets

In the HubSpot survey, marketers also brought up the B2B marketing challenge of creating content for a global audience. While this was not as big of an issue for marketers as other challenges like generating leads, a little more than 1 in 5 marketers noted they had trouble creating content for an international audience.

With globalization on the rise, marketers realize that their internet content can be accessed by almost anyone anywhere in the world, leading to more business opportunities than in the past. Although the need to reach out to more international audiences has its own set of B2B challenges, marketers need to keep context in mind.

To connect with a larger audience, research new keywords based on monthly search volumes, variations of search terms your target market is already searching for and phrases or topics that are actually content gaps in your site (and that your competitors may have on their sites).

Use A/B Testing

Utililize A/B testing and experiment with content offers, questions or lengths of forms and more. Collect data related to click through rate, number of content offer downloads and other relevant performance information. The data gathered from A/B testing gives you a better idea of which combination will maximize the number of leads generated.

2. Measuring Revenue/Outcomes

Another huge B2B marketing challenge for marketers in the HubSpot survey is proving return on investment of their marketing efforts. The survey showed 4 out of 10 of marketers said demonstrating ROI of their marketing activities was their top marketing challenge. Boosting ROI does not happen overnight and requires precise planning on the part of marketers to make sure their content ROI is easily trackable from the start.

Establish clear key performance metrics and targets. Setting measurable goals, like maximizing revenue per lead, is the vital component of reporting ROI for B2B marketing. Start by creating a list of goals for your traffic, ROI, content and other marketing activities. Then choose the key performance metrics by which you will measure the success of your marketing campaigns. These metrics may include:

• Total visits
• Bounce rate
• Click through rate
• Average time on page
• New leads generated
• Customer lifetime value
• Customer acquisition cost
• Number of backlinks generated

Use SEO tools like Google Analytics and Moz to monitor your chosen key performance metrics on a comprehensive dashboard.

3. Boosting Flat Traffic

Flat traffic is an issue that may seem hard to overcome, even if you already have great traffic on your site.

How to Overcome This:

Perform a content audit and competitor analysis. Take inventory of the existing content on your website and take note of the content your competitors are churning out that has been successful with your target audience. The solution is similar for problems with lead generation: Look for content opportunities that use new keywords, have higher monthly search volumes or pursue users interested in niche markets that your products and services may find success.

4. Finding the Time

The ClearVoice survey on marketing challenges revealed marketers struggled with finding the time to perform their job. It’s not just a matter of time management, but the fact that inbound marketers juggle many roles in their daily job, ranging from search engine optimization to social media management to website development.

How to Overcome This:

Utilize automation. When marketers are pressed for time, they can take advantage of a variety of automation tools. For example, social media management tool Buffer allows marketers to schedule posts in advance for their main channels, including Facebook and Twitter, setting the date and time to ensure their posts are seen by the most followers.

5. Keeping Up with Mobile Trends

The Adobe survey on issues affecting the marketing industry found 68 percent of marketers believe it is vital for them to be experienced in mobile content marketing. This includes local SEO where marketers must anticipate the keywords and phrases that allow their businesses to get found while consumers are on the move.

How to Overcome This:

Optimize your mobile site and local SEO. For your mobile site, be sure to use responsive design that allows your existing site to fit whatever screen -- desktop, tablet or smartphone -- consumers are using. This is especially relevant when marketing to business heads who are always on the go. Finally, read up on the latest trends in mobile when you have the chance to stay current on this critical part of B2B marketing.