We all agree that modern-day digital marketing is sophisticated enough to need different strategies if you are a B2B company or a B2C company.
There are areas where the two strategies overlap, such as with Twitter marketing, but generally to get the best results you need different tactics for your B2B prospects than your B2C prospects.
The good news is that you can run a successful B2B marketing strategy by focusing on a few areas in a different way to your normal campaigns.
Also, digital marketing is a great leveller where small companies can compete with larger ones.
In fact, there are occasions such as Strategy #9 where smaller firms have an advantage over their larger competitors.
In today’s post I’ve compiled 15 B2B marketing strategies and tactics that you can start using today.
I’ve split them up into 4 sections :
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Other
Enjoy and let me know what you think…
LinkedIn is the best social network for B2B marketers but it does require a bit of work to fully take advantage of the great possibilities it offers.
If you don’t have the time for LinkedIn, focus on Twitter where you can achieve brand awareness a lot quicker with less time.
Just bear in mind that Twitter doesn’t create or convert leads as well as LinkedIn.
If you want specific strategies on using Twitter for business, click here for an earlier post I’ve written on this.
1 – LinkedIn Premium
LinkedIn has a paid version, called LinkedIn Premium, which offers features unavailable to free users.
The best feature for most B2B businesses is InMail.
This is LinkedIn’s built-in email function.
It allows you to not only message your own connections but anyone else in the network.
So you can research potential customers / clients and directly message the decision-makers inside of LinkedIn.
Don’t use this feature to spam local businesses as ultimately that will work against you.
Use the feature to make a quick introduction of yourself and your business and see who responds.
As with a lot of this type of marketing, it’s unlikely your first contact will convert them into a client.
It will however make them aware of your brand which is always a good thing.
If you want more details on LinkedIn Premium, click here.
2 – Your LinkedIn Company Page
The majority of company pages are very factual.
“We do this.”
“We are here.”
That’s it.
And that’s okay but ask yourself this :
could you change your company page into more of a marketing asset?
Usually the answer is yes.
Talk with your marketing department about making it more promotional without appearing too ‘salesy.’
If you are not happy with changing your company page, take advantage of Showcase Pages.
These are pages which allow companies to highlight different aspects of their business by showcasing their products or services.
You can find more info on these here.
3 – LinkedIn Groups
If you are a regular user of LinkedIn you will know about groups. If not, it’s time to get involved.
Groups offer you a great opportunity to enhance your reputation as an industry expert.
Whilst joining groups in your own industry is a good idea to enhance your reputation, you need to also join groups where your potential customers hang out.
I find that local business groups are a great place to start. People often ask for recommendations or for services in those sorts of groups.
If your product or service compliments another industry, join those industry groups as well.
Now, once you are in a group, forget about selling!
Your sole purpose is to appear knowledgeable (which of course you are!)
Answer questions where you can and be as helpful as possible. It will pay off in the future.
If you want further details on LinkedIn Groups, click here.
Content Marketing
Content marketing should be the foundation of any marketing strategy and that is also true with B2B marketing.
4 – Create A Content Marketing Plan
If you are already regularly posting new articles on your site or blog then you have a content marketing plan.
If not, it’s time to create one for your business.
Focus on writing factual or data driven articles. These types of articles prove you are an expert in your industry and work well when attracting business customers.
Click here for more information on creating a content marketing plan.
5 – Create Content For Each Stage Of Your Sales Funnel
This could have been included in the content marketing plan above but it’s such an important strategy that it deserves it’s own section.
Also, companies with content marketing plans do not always do this.
Most businesses know their sales funnel and have a set of processes to convert a lead into a customer or client.
There are often stages along the funnel such as :
- Lead
- Qualified Lead
- Committed
- Client
Yours will probably be different but you get my drift.
You need to tailor your content to tackle the questions and queries your potential customers have at each stage.
I will use a firm of solicitors as an example.
A potential client at the lead stage, or even before that, is probably doing research about what type of solicitor they need etc.
If they came across an article called “What To Look For In A Solicitor” or something similar, that would be of interest to them and they would read that article.
Now imagine that article is on your site…
Do you think that would give you a headstart over the competition?
Of course it would!
Think about the types of searches people do at each stage of the sales funnel and write articles to answer those search queries.
6 – Guest Post On Industry Sites
Business owners and decision makers regularly read industry news sites.
These sites also appear high in search engine results when people are searching for your product or service.
So it’s safe to say that if you were on those sites that would be good, right?
Oh yes.
Well the good news is that a lot of these sites will accept contributions from people like yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, the better and more influential the site, the harder it will be to qualify to write for them so they won’t accept anyone.
However, if you are a good writer and can demonstrate your knowledge in your industry, you should be able to find some great places to publish your content.
Every site has a different set of rules so make sure you read them thoroughly first and understand the commitment required with this type of strategy.
To find appropriate sites, go into Google and search for your industry + ‘news.’
You should find the top news sites in your industry.
Go into each site and see if they have a ‘contributors’ or ‘guest posts’ page.
This will contain all the information you need to make a judgement on whether the site would work for you.
I can use myself as an example here:
I went into Google and searched ‘social media news.’
After looking through the sites, I found that Social Media Today was the best fit for me.
I read their rules on becoming a contributor and applied to write for them.
I passed and now I blog there when I write about social media and business.
7 – Syndicate Your Content on LinkedIn
This could have been included in either of the first two sections.
LinkedIn have now expanded their publishing platform to members as well as influencers.
This means that you too can now publish long-form posts on LinkedIn.
When you publish a long-form post, it’s shared with your connections and followers.
This gives you a great opportunity to show the prospects you’ve targeted earlier what an expert you are in your industry.
Now, in an ideal world you would create enough content that you could publish unique articles on LinkedIn but that’s not always practical.
In which case, syndicate your existing content on there instead.
Write an intro paragraph especially for your LinkedIn connections and followers and then include as much of your original post as you want in the post.
Make sure to reference your original post and only choose your best content.
The publishing platform is still very new but I’m told companies are having success with this strategy.
8 – Turn Existing Content Into White Papers and eBooks
What is the real difference between an ebook and an in-depth blog post?
Not much. In my opinion anyway.
Maybe the file format?
Anyway, recycling your content into a white paper and ebook changes people’s perception of it.
Put together all your blog posts about one particular subject, write an introduction to …err… introduce your posts and turn into a PDF file.
Voila, you have an ebook.
And there are so many document sharing sites you can upload the ebook too.
If you think the ebook is of a high enough quality, consider loading on to the Kindle Store too.
Be careful with this though as if you upload a really low quality product, it might damage your reputation.
Social Media Marketing
Social media offers you a chance to interact with your current and potential customers in a more personable way.
It is also your best opportunity to create awareness about your company.
9 – Use Social Media To Be More Personable
One advantage a smaller company has over a larger one is the ability to deal with customers on a more personal and individual level.
You can make your self more approachable than a large, faceless organisation.
How do you do this?
One very successful way is to encourage your customers to give you feedback over social media.
If the nature of your product or service is confidential, then this won’t be appropriate for you.
However, dealing with customer service queries through one of your social networks creates a great impression for potential customers.
They get to see how you deal with your current customers and this is the sort of reassurance which can convince them to use your company.
Imagine the difference between reading on a website “we look after our customers” to actually seeing it in action.
Which company would you choose?
I thought so.
10 – Connect With Complimentary Businesses
In most industries there are potential partnerships with complimentary businesses.
Connect with as many of these as possible.
If one of their customers needs a product or service you offer, you have more chance of being recommended.
11 – Mention Target Companies In Your Social Media Posts
You probably have a list of businesses you’d like to make contact with.
And you’ve probably used the traditional marketing methods to try to get an introductory meeting.
But have you tried mentioning them in a tweet yet?
Every time someone uses your Twitter handle (like @smarterpillar), you receive a notification of who mentioned you.
So if you mention another business in a tweet of yours, they will receive the same notification.
It’s got to be worth a try surely?
Obviously you need to be sensible in how you mention the target and make it look natural.
You can use this same technique to get the attention of the potential business partners mentioned in strategy #10.
Other
12 – Email Existing Customers
An often underused B2B marketing strategy is to leverage your existing customers.
Selling repeat services or extra products to existing customers is a standard practice in most businesses.
But have you ever asked for a referral?
Businesses are often reluctant to ask for fear of offending the customer but if they are happy customers the worse they will do is ignore your request.
Put yourself in their shoes. Would you really be offended by a request like that?
13 – Run A Social Media Competition Exclusively for Existing Customers
This strategy works on many levels.
Firstly, you offer your existing customers an entry into, say a champagne draw, if they tweet about your business.
You can even write the tweet you want them to post.
(You can adjust the prize based on your budget and what you think would appeal to your customers. It could even be one of your own products or services.)
As I’ve mentioned earlier, you receive notifications when someone tweets about you and this allows you to keep track of the customers who have entered the competition.
When they tweet about you, all their followers will see that.
Suddenly you reach an audience which you could never have reached on your own.
The reason I recommend running it only for existing customers is it creates a sense of exclusivity for your customers.
This will be noticed by your potential customers.
14 – Run Webinars
Webinars are a part of our work lives now but I don’t see many businesses taking advantage of them.
From a technical point of view, it’s very simple and cheap to run your own webinar nowadays.
Services such as GoToWebinar are fairly cheap and very easy to use. You don’t need any technical skills, you just need to be able to go into a website and run a slideshow.
The most common objection I hear to running webinars is coming up with the content or idea.
Well, I’m into my recycling and in this case I tell my clients to take a blog post and convert it into a slideshow.
I did exactly that with this post which became this slideshow.
Using this technique, as long as you have regular content, you also have regular subjects for your webinars.
A bonus of doing this is that you can also upload the slideshow to a site such as Slideshare like I did above.
Slideshare is a very popular document sharing site and performs well in search engines.
15 – Be A Guest Speaker At An Event or Trade Conference
The more observant of you will have noticed this isn’t really a digital marketing strategy!
You’re right, it isn’t but I think it’s such a good idea I had to include it.
Attendees at trade conferences are almost always there in a business capacity so they are automatically your target audience.
Sites such as Lanyrd.com have a very thorough list of conferences from all over the world for a large number of industries.
You can register yourself as a speaker so that organisers can invite you to speak at their event.
Speaking at trade events enhances your reputation as an expert in your industry and you can then leverage that in your marketing.
Conclusion
B2B marketing uses a lot of the same principles as B2C marketing. For me, the big differences are :
- Using LinkedIn as your primary social network (resources permitting)
- The need to combine the corporate and personal feel in your marketing
Creation of original content and curating relevant content from other sources should be the foundation for your B2B marketing strategy.
If you align the strategies above with your overall marketing strategy, you should be able to improve your B2B offering.
Remember, as with all digital marketing strategies, patience and consistency are key to your success.
The post Powerful B2B Marketing Strategies You Can Use Today appeared first on Smarterpillar.com.