A good look at your website analytics data should tell you if your current Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing strategy is driving business growth. If your current lead generation efforts are not attracting, converting, closing, and delighting your target customer base, it’s time to rethink if you’re being too pushy with the way you communicate your business’s value proposition and consider a new digital marketing plan. Preferably, a plan that seamlessly integrates demographic targeting, online and offline Search Engine Optimization (SEO), segmented Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, social media marketing and community management, referral marketing, affiliate marketing, and marketing automation. We’ll discuss one-by-one how these digital marketing tactics can help B2B businesses generate leads.
Demographic Targeting
A successful digital marketing strategy zeroes in consumer research, a process which requires thoroughly exploring a brand’s profiled customers. By using tools to gather customer demographic data for demographic targeting, marketers will be able to identify their target market and categorize them according to their pain points.
Discovering pertinent customer information relating to buying behaviors and market research will help marketers devise a customer-centric online marketing plan that connects with your target audience. Moreover, it also allows business owners to make smart decisions about creating products and services that align with the needs of their customers.
SEO
Having a strong online presence is one of the most surefire ways to reach your target audience. To put your brand out there, you need to have an effective online and offline SEO strategy.
On-page SEO is all about optimizing your website to improve your search engine rankings. This includes title tags, URL structure, on-page content, and internal linking, to name a few. Onsite SEO is vital in helping search engines point users to your website when users search for your services online. On the other hand, off-page SEO is all about getting more websites to link to your website to increase the authority of your domain.
Which one is more important? Both of them are. On-page and off-page SEO tactics have different roles, but both are equally important because these two techniques are essential in driving site visits to generate more leads.
PPC Campaign Segmentation
B2B companies can leverage online advertising to attract new clients. This is done through PPC. In a nutshell, Pay-per-Click ads are paid ads. It is a platform intended to put your content out there, in front of users who are interested in your products or services.
PPC campaigns are good for B2B companies because of its hyper-targeting feature. When you do PPC ads, you get to choose the audience who will see your ads. For example, you can target potential buyers based on online search behavior, geographic location, or the device they are using. Another distinct advantage when doing PPC is that it allows advertisers to set their own budget. By doing so, they have more control over how much they can spend on their campaigns.
To make a PPC campaign more effective, advertisers recommend segmenting the campaigns. By segmenting your campaigns by the audience you want to target and the keywords you want to use to reach them, you can create a more compelling and relevant ad for your target buyer.
Social Media and Community Management
B2B companies need to put their brand out there on different social media platforms because the clients they are trying to tap are most likely navigating different social media platforms as well. By engaging with prospects on social media, marketers can easily connect with their target audience and gain some insight into how their prospects perceive their brand.
To start a social media campaign for your B2B, you need to spark the interest of your target audience. Content curation should be a good start. Curate content that will pique the interest of your prospects such as business tips, pain points, viable solutions, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and other relevant information that they will appreciate.
Referral Marketing
Serving your clients well can increase the chances of them referring you to their friends. But if you want to, you can bank on this process as part of your digital marketing strategy. We call this referral marketing.
Referral marketing is the process of identifying and implementing specific strategies to get your customers to refer you to their personal network. This technique has the potential for an amazing turnout. But before all that, you first need to have a strong strategy.
The first thing you need to do is to identify your referrers and map out your incentives. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer who will refer you to their contacts and think of what incentive would motivate you to do the referral. Cash is a common incentive but you are not limited to that option. You can still think out of the box.
As soon as you have that figured out, do the math. Be sure you are financially comfortable with the incentive you intend to give out to your referrers.
Finally, promote your referral program. Communicate the fine print properly so as not to create problems for your business in the long run.
Affiliate Marketing
If you want to have more people to help you find prospects and finalize a deal with them, you can dip a toe into affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is an effective way to help B2B companies reach their target sales revenues. By finding and recruiting the right affiliates, you can have people help get the word out about your business and close sales for you, in exchange for some incentives of course.
To find affiliates that can successfully close sales for you, you need to do your research. Target people who can connect well with your target audience, preferably those who have the time and the skill to close sales on your behalf. Once you have found the ideal affiliates, recruit them by offering an incentive program they couldn’t refuse.
To take your affiliate marketing to the next level, you might also want to automate your affiliate marketing program. There are available software programs that can help you keep track of your affiliates and their sakes, making it easier for you to send payment as soon as they are due. Affiliate software programs also allow marketers to send out email newsletters to their affiliates to touch base with them on a regular basis.
Marketing Automation
The Contact Us page on your website is very important. Even if you followed the best online marketing practices to a fault, you still won’t be able to close a sale if your buyers are not able to contact you. To that end, you need to make sure that your contact process is fast, easy, and uncomplicated. You can start by covering the basics—make the layout of your Contact Us page easy to navigate. Placing Call-To-Action buttons (CTA) and links strategically is also recommended.
By the time you have found a digital marketing strategy that works for your business, the marketing activities you need to do on a regular basis will become a routine. To save you time and keep you from getting burned out from doing the same thing day in and day out, you can transition your regular marketing activities into a marketing automation software.
From the name itself, marketing automation software is a program that marketers use to help them do online activities at a quicker turnaround time. This software allows you to streamline your marketing tasks and put in place the right metrics to track your strategy’s progress and improve your overall marketing efficiency.
If you’re just starting out at marketing automation, remember that the first thing you need to do is to define your buyer personas. These buyer personas, or semi-fictional representation of your ideal customers, can help you make smart marketing decisions in favor of the successful implementation of your online marketing program.
Next, focus on your workflows. Create a workflow based on your buyer’s journey or the stages your target buyer goes through before making a final purchase. The workflows and buyer’s journey for each of your buyer personas will change because they have different pain points. Thus, the journey they will take in order to find a solution will also change.
Keep in mind as well that high-quality content is crucial if you want to attract, convert, close, and delight your target buyers. Well-written content is essential if you want to make a solid connection with your buyer persona. Aside from that, you also need to look into the information you are gathering from your prospects. You can obtain the personal information of your target buyers by using lead magnets. But when doing so, make sure you are capturing the right information. The information you need from your prospects depends on their stage in the buyer’s journey. You would need more information if they’re in the decision stage as compared to when they’re only at the awareness stage.
Digital marketing strategies are anything but a one-size-fits-all pattern. This is why it’s important to build a strategy that puts a strong focus on the pain points of your B2B company, as well as the opportunities it can take advantage of. Otherwise, you would end up wasting your precious resources on a strategy that doesn’t identify, address, and integrate your business goals, your value proposition, and the market you want to tap.
DO YOU NEED HELP WEAVING ALL OF THESE IN ONE WELL-DEFINED DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY? WE CAN HELP. CLICK HERE TO BOOK A CONSULTATION WITH OUR TEAM.
References:
https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/marketing/b2b-digital-marketing/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320829
https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2013/02/tips-for-running-b2b-affiliate-programs/