Marketing for B2B – Guaranteed to Grow Your Business

Marketing for B2B has changed DRAMATICALLY over the past 10 years. You know that movie “Death of a Salesman”, its kind of like that but it also isn’t… let me explain.

Now with the internet and targeted advertising, buyers are much more proficient when making a purchase decision. Does this mean that there is no need for a salesman (or woman)? Definitely not.

Who is going to create brand awareness, push prospects through the funnel and who is going to be able to communicate the emotional value of a solution to a prospect?

Yes, the sleazy salesman is DEAD and personally I hope they never return as it created a bad name for sales people.

In my opinion, salespeople are necessary to provide solutions to people with problems.

Enough about my rant…

You have come to understand more about Marketing for B2B.

You may wonder, though, which marketing tactics are essential for success in today’s hyper-competitive environment? In this article, we will explore the fundamental B2B marketing strategies that will not only help your business keep up, but help you get ahead. First let’s define exactly what we mean by B2B marketing and examples of how it looks in action.

What is B2B Marketing?

B2B marketing consists of the series of strategies and techniques used by a firm to effectively reach, nurture and sell their products and services to other businesses. In B2B marketing, the buyers are often c-suite or director-level professionals at other companies. Therefore, B2B marketing is different from other kinds of marketing.

One key difference when businesses buy from other businesses is how there is often a longer sales cycle. Buyers are looking for solutions that solve complex challenges related to their businesses. So effective B2B marketing is challenged with providing relevant, helpful and persuasive content that attracts the attention of buyers at all stages of possible interest. Let’s explore how this looks practically with some examples.

Difference Between B2B & B2C Marketing?

B2B vs B2C Marketing

B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing are very different. B2B and B2C marketing differ in their respective strategies and applications, as well as in their audiences and how they communicate to them.

B2B marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individuals who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, their organization (rather than for themselves), thus making the organization the customer.

Here are a few examples of B2B companies:

• A coworking space that leases office spaces to remote teams and freelancers (like WeWork)
• An on-demand order fulfillment, warehousing, and screen printing service (like Printful)
• A marketing software company that sells social media management tools, lead generation software, and other marketing tools to businesses and organizations (like HubSpot!)

B2C marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individual consumers who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, themselves, thus making the individual the customer. Here are a few examples of B2C companies:

• An e-commerce company that sells office supplies to remote or self-employed individuals (like Poppin)
• A store that sells t-shirts and other clothing and accessories (like Target)
• A music platform that sells streaming subscriptions (like Spotify)

Take a look at this chart comparing B2B and B2C customers.

	for b2b marketing	for b2c marketing
Goal	Customers are focused on ROI, efficiency, and expertise.	Customers are seeking deals and entertainment (which means marketing needs to be more fun).
Purchase Motivation	Customers are driven by logic and financial incentive.	Customers are driven by emotion.
Drivers	Customers want to be educated (which is where B2B content marketing comes in).	Customers appreciate education but don’t always need it to make a purchase decision.
Purchase Process	Customers like (if not prefer) to work with account managers and salespeople.	Customers like to make purchases directly.
People Involved in Purchase	Customers often have to confer with decision makers and other members of their chain of command before making a purchase decision.	Customers rarely need to confer with others before making a purchase decision.
Purchase Purpose	Customers make purchases for long-term solutions, resulting in a longer sales cycle, longer contracts, and longer relationships with companies.	Customers aren’t necessarily looking for long-term solutions or long-term relationships.

As much as they differ, though, B2B and B2C also intersect in many ways. While Poppin sells office supplies to remote or self-employed individuals, they also design corporate office spaces and branded supplies.

On the flip side, Printful not only offers order fulfillment and warehousing to businesses; they also fill e-commerce printing orders for individuals.

As distinct as the B2B and B2C marketing audiences can be, B2B marketers can always learn from B2C campaigns, too.

B2B Marketing Strategies for Demand Generation

There are dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of companies that need your services or products. You know that. I know that. The companies themselves? Not so much. They may not even realize they have a problem. That’s where demand generation comes in.

In a nutshell, B2B demand generation marketing makes companies and buyers aware of a problem they have, aware that a solution exists and that you have it, and interested in learning more about your product or service. These are the digital strategies that work best for demand generation:

• Display advertising
• Content marketing
• Video marketing
• Social media marketing (and advertising)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)

DISPLAY ADVERTISING

At the beginning of the B2B buyer funnel is the “see” stage, and display ads are a perfect “see” strategy. If you aren’t familiar with them, display ads are image, video, and text ads displayed on the pages of websites participating in Google’s AdSense program.

Display advertising is a reliable medium for the top of the funnel for two reasons:

• It’s contextual advertising—advertising on a website that is relevant to the page’s content.
• It takes advantage of the cell phone theory, which says consumers subliminally take in what’s around them even when they’re distracted. Later, those subliminal surroundings seem familiar, meaning consumers can remember your company simply by subliminally taking in the message from a PPC display ad while they’re doing something else.

B2B CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing is a big bucket, and one that 91% of B2B marketers are currently using. It includes blogs, social media, videos, press releases and news articles, FAQs, email newsletters, e-books, white papers, case studies, infographics, and many more granular pieces.

You need it because more and more buyers are relying on digital content to make decisions. More than half of all B2B buyers view at least eight pieces of content during the purchase process, and more than 80% of buyers view at least five articles. A full 75% of buyers say content significantly impacts their buying decision, and 62% say they can finalize their purchase selection criteria based on digital content alone.

The biggest mistake you can make in content marketing at any stage of the journey is to make it all about you.

B2B companies must create “buyer enablement” content—content that supports the completion of critical buying tasks. To build this type of content, marketing leaders must:

• Understand the specific tasks that buyers need to perform through the purchase journey
• Provide information and tools that target these specific tasks
• Make the information available to buyers through their preferred channels

Gartner’s study found that currently, only roughly 20% of the information on B2B websites out there displays characteristics of buyer enablement—which means you have a big opportunity.

“Most companies build [content strategies in the name of thought leadership, brand awareness, and personalization—focusing primarily on their own features and benefits. However, as it turns out, there’s significant commercial benefit for companies that focus their content on customers and helping them through the purchase process” – Martha Mathers, MVP, Gartner

These are the types of content marketing pieces that work at the top of the funnel:

• Blog posts – Blogs in the demand generation stage should make buyers aware of and interested in your product. Identify the problems your product or service solves, and incorporate them into engaging blog posts. The idea here is to move away from producing content that focuses on what you do and create more content that shows customers you understand their pain points and are capable of eliminating them. Bonus points for blogs that accomplish storytelling and make an empathetic connection—B2B buyers love that. ALERT: If you want these blogs actually to work for you, you need to distribute them and optimize them for search engines (more on SEO further down)
• Social media posts – See below.
• Infographics – Our minds are drawn to images—they’re easier for our brains to understand. We can process a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second. Essentially, infographics condense information into an easy-to-understand snapshot.
• E-books – To make e-books work for you, be sure to provide the reader with actionable takeaways as well as valuable resources like checklists, tips, and actual guides. The biggest mistake you can make with an e-book is making it overly about you, which will turn off buyers in a heartbeat.

Don’t forget—you need a content distribution plan for your content to work for you.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media is the modern-day B2B billboard and can significantly help your brand. But before you jump into B2B social media marketing, I’ll let you in on a secret: pick your platforms wisely, because not all social media platforms are best for every business. The exception for B2B is LinkedIn. If you’re B2B, you need to be on LinkedIn. 

Before you dump your entire marketing budget into social, understand it will probably not become your top source of B2B leads and sales—that’s why it’s under the demand generation section. 

Will it support your lead generation tactics, improve your branding and authority, and help tip iffy buyers over the edge?

If you’re good at it, yes—but you have to be good at it, or have a social media marketing company that is. Based on my experience in managing social media for B2B companies, these are the best types of social media posts for B2B demand generation:

• Blog posts
• Upcoming (and previous) webinars
• Statistics and “did you know” facts
• Industry news
• How to, branding, and attention-grabbing videos under 60 seconds
• Case studies, white papers, and industry research

VIDEO MARKETING

Every day when I get home from work, I sit down on my couch, turn on my TV, and watch business, leadership, and marketing YouTube (and now TikTok) videos for 20-odd minutes until dinner’s ready.

Every. Day.

I’m not alone—70% of B2B buyers and researchers watch videos on their path to purchase. Business decision makers LOVE online videos because they’re the fastest, easiest way to get information. No decision-maker in any company ever has said, “Wow, look at all the time I have.”

That’s not the only reason to use videos in the awareness stage—viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in a text.

Get their attention with top-of-the-funnel video marketing. The best videos for top-of-the-funnel marketing are:

• Video mid-roll and pre-roll YouTube ads
• How-to videos
• Branded videos and video ads
• Blog videos
• Entertaining, funny, or attention-grabbing videos

The key here is that you have to distribute them. Sure, you can make a bunch of videos and let them sit on your YouTube page, but that’s about as effective as throwing a bunch of brochures in the air and walking away. Distribute your videos via PPC ads and social media ads.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of altering your website’s code and content to rank higher in search engines (like Google) for specific keywords and phrases. You need it because 71% of B2B researchers begin their research with generic Google searches, and researchers do an average of 12 searches before engaging on a specific brand’s site.

That means you (and your competitors) have 12 opportunities for your website to rank at the top of the search results and grab the attention of a buyer.

SEO fits in both the demand generation and lead generation buckets, depending on what keywords and phrases you optimize for. For example, if you optimize a piece of content for “what is B2B marketing,” you’re more likely to catch the attention of someone in the very early stages of the buyer’s journey. Switch that optimization to “B2B marketing company reviews,” and you’re more likely to attract buyers in the purchase, or “do” stage of the journey. This is called optimizing for search intent.

B2B Marketing Strategies for Lead Generation

Once buyers are aware of your product or service, you can nudge them into the “think” and “do” stages. Below you’ll find the top marketing strategies for B2B lead generation:

• PPC search ads
• Remarketing
• Events
• Affiliates, testimonials, partnerships
• Content marketing
• SEO

PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ADVERTISING (PPC)

What if you could serve ads to buyers at the moment they’re looking for your products and services? You can, with PPC search ads.

Open a new tab in your web browser, right now, and Google something. See those ads that take up the very top of the search results page? Those are PPC search ads. People actually like them, too—75% of people who click on ads say paid search ads make it easier to find the information they’re searching for online. Another reason to use search ads for middle-of-the-funnel marketing? You can literally bid on keywords and phrases that drive customers to your websites—and if you’re really good at it, you can identify the key phrases that result in the most leads and sales, which will reduce your ad spend costs and increase your return.

REMARKETING

You know the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind?” With remarketing, you’ll never be out of your target audience’s sight or mind. Remarketing (or retargeting) is the practice of serving ads across the internet to people who have already visited your website. It allows your company to seem like they’re “following” people around the web by serving ads on the websites and platforms they use most.

On average, only 2% of your website visitors convert. Remarketing goes after that other 98%.

And guess what? Remarketing increases conversions. Research from WordStream found that the more times a user sees an ad, the higher the conversion rate.

EVENT MARKETING

In the B2B setting, events help generate the most leads. This hasn’t changed from years past. Today’s empowered buyer still wants to build relationships, and events are the best way to do that. If you can’t host an event, make sure to go to the ones that are relevant to your industry and always do research on attendees.

AFFILIATES, TESTIMONIALS, AWARDS, PARTNERSHIPS

Some marketing strategies help tip iffy prospects into becoming solid leads and sales. Creating authority builders is one of them. And when it comes to authority, everybody who knows anything about business gets that it’s not so much what you know, it’s who you know. One testimonial, award, or affiliation can do the same amount of work as 20 white papers and blogs.

Take yourself out of this article for a minute, and think about hiring someone to repair your roof. You’ve narrowed it down to two companies that cost the same and have the same general reviews. You see on one company’s website that they are affiliated with the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) and are Better Business Bureau accredited with an A+ rating (BBB A+). The other company’s website has no awards, partnerships, or affiliations.

You’ve got five seconds—which one would you choose?

From my gut (which—let’s be honest—is where most purchase decisions are really made), I’d choose the one with the BBB A+ rating and membership to NARI. Why? Because it increases my confidence that they’re better qualified and held to a higher standard.

Point blank, creating an extensive network of testimonials, affiliates and partnerships, and accreditations/awards is the best way to generate authority by association.

SEO

As we said above, SEO fits in both lead and demand generation buckets. The difference here lies in what you optimize for, or search intent. For B2B lead generation, you’ll want to focus on high-commercial-intent key phrases, including:

• Purchase-related keywords, e.g., “buy,” “RFP,” “packages” or “quote”
• Branded and competitor terms
• Contact keywords like “contact,” “call,” or “request”
• Comparison, cost, and pricing terms like “reviews” “how much,” or “cost of”
• Location-specific keyword modifiers like city, state, or ZIP code

If you had to choose one B2B marketing channel to pursue leads, it should be SEO. SEO is one of the most effective—if not THE most effective—B2B lead generation strategy. Here, I’ll prove it:

Take a look at the image below. What you’re looking at is lead growth over the past three years:

While we engaged in multiple digital marketing channels and strategies, SEO was our primary focus and where the majority of our budget went. Currently, SEO accounts for 73% of our leads, and our blog is one of our top lead generators.  We also saved a TON of money, since SEO has an astronomically high conversion rate compared to other channels.

CONTENT MARKETING

You’ll see above that we transformed our blog from our worst lead generator into one of our best—and you can do it, too. Blogs and webinars are great demand generators, but you’re solving for a different problem with lead generation content marketing. In the lead generation stage, you need to solve for the last three tasks/jobs buyers have to complete during the purchase process—supplier selection, validation, and consensus creation. The best content marketing pieces for this stage are ones that display your authority, expertise, and proof of your results; as well as and shareable buy-in pieces marketers can easily explain and distribute to other stakeholders:

• Blogs that display your expertise on your industry (think: “how-to X,” “how we did X”, “why you should X,” and “ultimate guide” blogs)
• Content that helps create buy-in from other parties in the purchase process
• Testimonials and reviews
• Infographics and explainer videos about your products/services and how they benefit your target audience
• Press coverage
• News releases
• Blurbs about awards and partnerships
• Anecdotes about your company’s culture, history, and core values
• Case studies
• White papers

There’s a caveat: currently, 57% of buyers say much of the B2B content out there is crap.

Here’s what buyers want: customer/peer examples, content from credible sources, and short, digestible content. Avoid salesy product features, articles written by unseasoned pros, and long content.

B2B Marketing Strategies for Customer Retention and Recovery

Great, you’ve got a new client!

Now, how are you going to keep them? An important part of the B2B buyer’s journey is the loyalty loop—according to Marketing Metrics, it’s more than 350% more profitable to sell to an existing customer than to a new one. The goal is to make your buyers start the process all over again with a new product or additional service, or even better, become a brand advocate for you.

The strategies below are the best ways to accomplish customer retention and recovery.

CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing is one of the best ways to keep current clients interested. Not only does it keep your company top-of-mind, but it also empowers your buyers to make better decisions with your service or products. There are five types of content marketing that work for client retention and recovery:

• Blogs – Every morning, I read up on my favorite marketing and MarTech blogs to see what’s new. The better the blogs, the more skills and knowledge I gain, the more I respect the vendor, and the more likely I am to use them again.
• E-books and whitepapers – Now that you’ve got a customer, empower them by giving them educational material in the form of whitepapers and e-books.
• Social media – Regularly post your blogs, webinars, new products, and client testimonials to your social media profiles. You never know when they’ll see something that sparks their interest.
• Videos – Video marketing is great for customer retention and recovery, and it can be a pretty innovative B2B marketing strategy if you go with 360-degree and interactive videos. Create video versions of your blogs, explainer videos, and short ads for different products and services.
• Webinars – Help customers use your product or take advantage of your service more effectively with educational webinars, interviews, and Q&As.

MARKETING AUTOMATION (INCLUDING EMAIL MARKETING)

By now, email is a pretty traditional B2B marketing strategy—an oldie but a goodie. It’s a great way to stay top-of-mind and help your existing customer base stay aware of new products, insights, and deals/savings from your company.

The marketers doing it right see (on average) a 760% increase in revenue from segmented, customized marketing campaigns.

Some examples of good email marketing for the bottom of the funnel include:

• Monthly newsletters
• Blog newsletters
• Webinar notifications
• New service offering notifications
• Thank-you and culture-building emails
• Webinar announcements and reminders
• New e-book announcements
• Staff introduction emails

The Serial Seller Close

I hope this helps you and your business in putting some marketing in place. Marketing for B2B is much easier in my opinion, probably why I have continued with it for so long…

Being able to send cold emails and make cold calls to people while they are at work or not invading their personal privacy by emailing their work email makes it a lot easier to ignite conversations.

With B2C it is a lot more “behind closed door” sales. Utilizing more of the Social Media and Blog content to create awareness and build trust with an audience so that you can one day sell to them.

Overall, as we always say! Focus on the high ROI activities first as they will want to make you invest more time and effort into sales and marketing.

Once you have a few sales, it will also help you understand if you business is scalable and can handle new clients being onboarded at a faster rate.

If you need any help with your Marketing for B2B or any of the individual parts of building a sales and marketing team Book A Call With Us Now!