When you run a B2B company, you have to take into account additional considerations. How are you going to build long-term relationships with your prospects? How are you going to educate them on your benefits and features? What are the best ways to address all of their apprehensions? These questions are only the tip of the iceberg.
Your sales cycle is longer because the investment is greater. So you have to be strategic about how to deliver information — and which marketing channels are optimal to best cater to your ideal customers.
So let’s take a look at what these channels are, their benefits, and trends to follow for a maximum return on investment.
B2B marketing channels are the mediums you use to get your intended audience to get information about what you have to offer. This can vary depending on their age range, education level, industry, job title, geographical location, income level, any other relevant demographics, and your campaign goals.
For example, if your target audience is of the younger variety it would probably be most beneficial to use visuals, such as video tutorials, reels, or having a YouTube channel. By the same token, if your services require more in-depth information, it may be more effective to conduct webinars, write eBooks, or do a podcast series.
In short, it’s utilizing digital methods to reach your specific target audience in a way that would appeal to them the most.
There are several reasons why every business should use digital marketing channels to reach their audience.
Marketing costs money. That’s not a secret. But while investing into it is part and parcel of running a business, some forms of spreading your message make more financial sense than others. Digital marketing is more cost effective for B2B companies precisely because you have to first establish a relationship with prospects. Therefore, you’re better off focusing your efforts on targeting your campaigns in those individuals who are most likely to eventually become customers. And digital marketing provides the tools to do exactly that.
When you use digital marketing, your readers get the information as soon as you publish it. It’s also easily shareable and can be repurposed in a matter of a few hours. So while the life cycle is still longer than for B2C companies, using digital marketing is the equivalent of sending a letter via email versus carrier pigeon.
Tools like contact segmentation in CRMs, establishing demographics in social media ads, smart content, personalization tokens, lead magnets, live chat, lead scoring, lifecycle stages, and reengagement emails all enable you to attract the right audience. You are tailoring your messaging specifically to what the reader needs — and what they need at the precise moment they’re reading it. So as they move down the sales funnel, they will be more likely to turn into customers.
When you send out mailed marketing materials, you don’t know who reads it, who throws it directly into their recycling bin, and who lines their cat litter with it. On the other hand, you can create customized dashboards to track the metrics that matter to you. This can include website traffic, email open rates, clickthrough rates, or anything else that you’re incentivizing them to do with your calls to action.
We live in an age of short attention spans, instant gratification, and fierce competition. So you really have to prioritize ways to make a lasting impression.
You can no longer get away with simply greeting email readers by name. Yes, you still want to do that, but you also want to gather as much information from them as possible through your CRM so that you can make it clear that you’re reaching out with content that’s specific to them. No confusion as to whether you’re sending cookie cutter content.
For example, suggestions based on previous purchases, abandoned cart reminders, suggested readings based on the pages they’ve viewed on your website, or even a happy birthday communication (along with a discount, if you can. That’s always nice).
People love to talk about themselves. Ask them questions, and they’ll go into detail about why they’re unique. Or give them a quiz and they’ll go to town choosing what tickles their fancy. Or provide tools (such as calculators, cost estimates, worksheets, etc…) that they can use right now to get immediate answers. This will foster engagement and provide you with additional information that you can continue to use to provide them with personalized communications.
Even if your product or services are the most wonderful things ever invented by humankind, if your website loads slowly, is confusing, or your team takes forever to answer their inquiries, they will gladly turn to your competitors to meet their needs. User experience is crucial. Without it, you’re leaving money on the table. A lot of it. So make sure to design your website in a way that’s attractive, intuitive, and consistent. Offer multiple ways to contact you. Provide self-service options like a knowledge base and native payment. Make it as easy as possible for your audience to navigate your site.
What was once an eye roll worthy way for teenagers and college kids everywhere to show off and entertain themselves at the dinner table has now become a mainstream way of searching for information. It’s practical and easy, and readers get to browse through a voluminous stream of content that’s specifically related to what they’re looking for. So do keyword research and visit resources like Answer the Public to find out what your target audience is looking for, and include those hashtags on your social media posts. And please, do market research to find out where your ideal customer prefers to use, so that you can focus your efforts on the platforms they’re actually visiting.
Depending on your industry, you’re already aware of which trade shows and conventions you should be attending annually to expand your network. These are a given. But it behooves you to think outside the box and be aware of practical ways to spread your message year-round — in a way that reaches your audience wherever they are. Some of the best channels to implement into your marketing strategies include:
Email marketing is effective because people read it at a time that’s convenient to them. You’re also ensuring you stay top of mind through brand awareness, and it provides an unparalleled opportunity to establish long-term relationships by nurturing your leads.
However, it’s crucial to take some time to strategize about how to best serve your readers. For example, a person who is a new subscriber to your blog should not be receiving communications suitable for repeat customers and vice versa. You always want to provide them with relevant information that’s useful to them. Customer-centricity is the key. And you can achieve this with a good CRM software that enables contacts segmentation. Categorize your contacts based on the companies they work for, where they are on their buyer’s journey, stage in the sales funnel, and any other lifecycle stage that’s specific to your business.
Content marketing provides you with a more ample opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert. You can design long-form blog posts, infographics, videos, Instagram stories, eBooks, How To guides, and anything else that can walk your prospects through the process of getting acquainted with what you have to offer.
Content marketing doesn’t have to always be tailored towards making a sale. Just as with email marketing, you want to create information that’s useful to different segments of your audience. This includes top of the funnel content (MoFu), middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel content (MoFu and BoFu). This way, you’ll always jump out as being useful. Readers will view you as a resource that helps them solve short-term questions, regardless of whether they’re ready to pull out their wallets.
Content marketing goes hand in hand with search engine optimization. While readers can find you by clicking on calls to action in your marketing emails or social media posts, you also want to bring in organic traffic to your website (which is what happens when someone types in a query into Google and one of your links pops up in the SERPs).
Therefore, you want to do keyword research to help you narrow down what your audience is looking for. Implement them into your titles, subheadings, URLs, meta descriptions, image names, and alt text. You also want to link your content to reputable sources of information so that readers can be assured that you’re providing them with reliable material. You want your webpages to load fast. You want them to have a responsive design so that they provide a great user experience regardless of the device the reader is reading the content from.
Webinars are online presentations that are held in real-time. This provides your audience with the opportunity to ask questions via live chat if they attend it while it’s taking place. And for those who can’t attend, they can watch a recording and still get some value out of it.
This type of content gives you the opportunity to showcase your knowledge and skills without having to edit to make yourself look good. It’s live TV, baby. Someone asks a question, you get to answer on the spot. People also get a sense of your personality, which is always good when it comes to finding someone relatable and wanting to do business with them.
Webinars are also a source of qualified leads, since someone who’s not that interested in what you have to offer isn’t likely to enroll for it and set aside a good portion of time to sit and listen to what you have to say.
Bonus points: When it’s over, you can repurpose the content into a blog, infographic, slide show, or anything else your audience may find valuable.
Word of mouth is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. It costs you nothing, and prospects are more likely to trust a recommendation from someone in their network than any advertising copy.
One way to increase the likelihood of getting referrals is to provide an extraordinary customer experience. Delight your customers by going above and beyond their expectations. Make them so happy to do business with you that they want to shout it from the rooftops.
In addition, you can straight out ask them to send people your way. You can also incentivize them to do so by providing them with a discount code for their next purchase, or by providing them with an upsell at a reduced cost.
Conversion rate optimization refers to taking steps to increase the number of people who take a desired action. This can include getting more people to subscribe to your newsletter, fill out an online form in one of your landing pages, download your lead magnets, enroll in a webinar, attend an event, request a demo, schedule a discovery call, join an online conference…
To get your conversion rate, you divide the total number of people who took these actions (conversions) by the number of site sessions.
This process requires a lot of market research, developing buyer personas, and A/B testing; then tracking all of it so that you can analyze what’s working and what needs to be modified.
Podcasts are another way to let people know that, hey, you do know what you’re talking about. They get to hear your voice and your confidence as you explain concepts to them. You can also integrate Q&A sessions with industry experts to provide more in-depth discussions of your audience’s topics of interest.
This type of marketing is also a practical way to reach your audience while they’re busy doing something that doesn’t allow them to stop and read information. For example, your buyers could find out more about you while driving, running, cleaning the house, or otherwise going about their day. No need to wait until they have time to sit down and browse through text.
Sales and marketing teams in B2B organizations are under constant pressure to generate leads and close deals. To be successful, you need to identify and focus on the right sales and lead generation channels.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing the best channels for your business, including:
Once you've considered these factors, you can start to identify which channels will yield the best results.
If you don’t have the internal staff who can help you achieve your marketing and sales objectives, let us help you! From consulting to fully managing your campaigns, we can help you get to where you want to go.