Are you looking for B2B marketing strategies that are working for businesses now and will continue to do so in the long run?
You are at the right place!
You might come across numerous blog posts with a generic list of strategies to perform for B2B business; however, we have curated the best strategies and the reasons why you should implement them!
Here is what we will cover in this article:
- What is B2B Marketing?
- Essential B2B Marketing
- Top B2B Strategies to focus in 2021 & beyond
- A quick insight into the success of listed strategies
Let’s jump right in!
B2B Marketing is all about promoting a business (products or services) to other businesses.
To achieve success in this, you need to leverage several B2B strategies (specific to your business niche).
As a B2B business, it is important to identify and understand your target audience’s pain points and develop specific solutions to address them.
Demonstrate that you are aware of your customers’ pain points, and actively develop strategies to provide solutions that meet those needs.
That is when you establish a meaningful connection with your target audience.
Your essentials to B2B Marketing
While you plan to market your business, to other businesses, here are the following actions that should be performed first:
- Extensive and in-depth research of your customers, industry, competitors, and buyer personas.
- Building a strong website that attracts, engages, and is prepared to drive sales.
- Keeping up with SEO efforts
- Mastering connection on social media
- Automating the marketing efforts (making use of CRM)
- Keeping a strict rule of checking analytics & reporting processes
- Having a contingency plan to optimize and test processes
You might ask yourself, why are the above actions essential?
The above actions are crucial in the development of marketing insights as those will be the driver of your overall B2B strategy.
Collectively, the findings will ensure you are targeting the right person, with the right intent to deliver exceptional experiences.
Ready to dive in further?!
Let us focus on B2B marketing strategies that work for businesses around the globe.
Top B2B Strategies to focus in 2021 & beyond
Extensive Research of Target Markets
Just a quick insight, 75% of Millennials will represent the global workforce by 2025.
As per Merit’s B2B Millennials Report, 30% are sole decision-makers and 73% of Millennials are involved in service or product purchase decision making for their businesses.
Today, researching your potential target market and consumers is of the utmost importance.
For example, if you were to focus on Millennials, you must work on:
- Quick responses to queries (through live chat option)
- Active social media presence (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, & others)
- Delivering seamless mobile experience (that’s where most millennials are)
Whether it is competitive analysis, target audience, or product upgrades, research is critical. Invest as much time as you can on it, and the dividends will certainly pay off!
Most of all, once you have concluded your research, do not forget to be open to experimentation, and testing.
Reach out to your audience in unique ways, to engage them in ways they have not been engaged before.
Have a leap of faith and try something new, doing so will allow you to deliver a better user experience.
Focus on Reviews, Case Studies & Testimonials
84% of people (users) trust the recommendations from colleagues, family, and friends over others.
Testimonials, case studies, and reviews from consumers are your social currency.
Performing the right research, having a website with targeted landing pages, engaging with your audience on social media is not valuable if you do not have happy customers who vouch for your products or services.
Humans tend to flock together. Period
Whether in the B2C or B2B industry, validation of being a great brand comes from people (your consumers), and with every validation comes referrals. This is the reason you need to focus on reviews and case studies. No doubt, it is working for numerous B2B companies out there.
Focus on building strategies around how you showcase the success of your products or services. Go with simple ways to explain how you, your team, and your product helped a business achieve its milestone.
Have a dedicated section to display your reviews and testimonials on your website. Perhaps promote those testimonials on social media.
Pivot your case studies to the pain points the customer was experiencing, complications they faced, and the improvements gained with your solution.
Creating content that makes people trust you takes time. Give it the time it requires, and it will age well for you!
Digital Marketing (B2B specific)
75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives actively use social media to make purchasing decisions. (Source: MartechSeries)
Well, of course, we do not suggest focusing all efforts on social media. but rather develop effective cross-channel strategies that target audiences on all the channels they reside.
Smart social media is what we see results from. Networking and interacting with industry professionals on professional channels and communities like LinkedIn or Quora can help you stay abreast of industry trends.
Conducting B2B SEO to increase organic traffic and rankings is another field to perform well on SERPs. Canva, HubSpot, and other big brands have grown at a phenomenal rate by focusing on super-smart B2B SEO strategies.
In 2021 and beyond, it will be all about your brands’ presence and the exceptional user experiences your brand offers.
Digital marketing, when leveraged properly will help you grow your B2B business above and beyond your expectations.
Do not forget, we are moving to a digital-first world!
Marketing Automation & AI
A study by Nucleus Research shows how automating marketing efforts can increase sales while reducing the cost. Marketing automation can drive a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead costs.
Just in case you were not aware, marketing automation software helps marketers carry out repetitive tasks and run campaigns to serve their customers, with little effort once established.
However, recently AI integrations are helping companies use data to mimic human intelligence, predict outcomes, suggest optimizations, and dynamically react to scenarios.
In short, if you want to serve the right content to the right person at the right time; tune your efforts into marketing automation.
It will not only help you bring efficiency and consistency to your marketing plan, but it will also scale easily.
Today, there is plenty of software that helps you with lead scoring, identify qualified leads, and assign them to a particular representative. Furthermore, automation within internal processes leads routing and data governance/management to streamline the lead nurturing process.
Top CRMs such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Insightly, Zoho, Zendesk are all coming up with frequent updates to their platform to meet the needs of the B2B customers.
A quick insight into the success
There you have it! The top 4 B2B marketing strategies that are working for businesses around the globe.
You might be thinking, implementing all these for your business may be challenging, but it is not! Even if you do not have an in-house team! An experienced Nucleus Research can help you with a customized plan to meet your goals.
Final and most important note: your B2B marketing strategies must be adaptive.
As a B2B marketer, focus on evolving your marketing strategies. Otherwise, you will be outshined by a competitor sooner than you expect.