What is B2B marketing? For certain companies and business owners, this will be a crucial element of their business model.
It’s important to explore what it is, whether it applies to you, the state of B2B marketing today and what it may look like. We’ll also explore some trends and concepts that may be useful to you from a B2B perspective.
B2B Marketing Explained
B2B stands for business-to-business. So, from a marketing perspective B2B promotion is where one business markets directly to another. This is in direct contrast to other marketing models which target general consumers.
Because of this, B2B marketing is often different from the typical promotional campaign. It is common for this form of promotion to be more informative and less directly promotional.
This is because B2B companies are focused on the ROI of a particular product and how it impacts their bottom-line revenue. Customers do not care about this and are influenced by marketing language and sale content.
With B2B promotion, you will also reach out to a group of individuals such as corporate investors rather than one primary individual. It can be difficult to find the right angle or strategy for B2B promotion.
However, new technology and advances are making this easier. Now, it is far more possible to develop a robust targeted campaign for these companies.
The Modern B2B Buyer
If you are not new to the B2B industry, it’s important to understand that the clients in this sector have changed considerably. For instance, 50% of B2B buyers are millennials. Millennials do not respond and do not convert from cold call tactics.
The typical B2B buyer is completing a lot of research themselves and will complete roughly 12 searches online before interacting with your brand. The majority of B2B clients will not pass through the marketing funnel in a single, streamlined process. Instead, they will repeat elements multiple times.
Now, let’s explore some B2B strategies you should implement to reach these target clients.
B2B Tactics
As B2B clients are now more likely to complete their own research and will repeat aspects of the marketing funnel, you need to focus on remarketing. Remarketing means that if a potential buyer sees your brand and then clicks away, they will be tracked.
They will then continue to see marketing for your business as they continue their search. This can provide the second chance you need to convert them into a client. Remember, only 2% of website visitors will convert on the first visit.
You need to appeal to the other 98% and remarketing allows you to do just that.
Content is still king in the business marketing world but it’s not the same as using content to target a typical consumer. Here, you need to provide rich content and with more depth. For instance, you should be focusing on types of marketing such as white papers. These provide valuable information that B2B clients want about your company.
It is the content that will make them eager to complete business with your company. The key aspect to focus on when creating content for B2B clients is ‘buyer enablement.’ To do this, you need to understand the journey your clients will take, provide the tools to assist them and offer this information through the channels they will be using.
Because B2B clients are completing their own research, a great website is crucial. Let’s start with a mobile-friendly website. Mobile friendly means it can be accessed from mobile devices and you can bet your potential clients will certainly use these.
Make sure it is actionable.
Ultimately, you need to show customers how they can contact you and provide clear ways for them to do this. You can lose over 40% of buyers by not making access points clear.
The Future Of B2B Marketing
Social media will have a clear role to play in B2B marketing. LinkedIn is a platform ideally positioned to lead this charge with $1 billion invested in the service for B2B marketing.
Ultimately, you are looking at a point where Linkedin is now your CRM system with automated options for reaching out to new potential leads. You could also use data to find out how effectively your employees are communicating with potential prospects and use the platform to leverage them.
Data from this platform would also highlight which organizations are viewing your profile, thus allowing you to trigger automated responses when these visits occur.
Data may also be used to provide a more personalized approach to B2B marketing. For instance, we could see real personalized tracking where messages and content can be marketed to the leader of that brand.
At a business conference, a digital message board could change to reflect the name of the business owner and be directly from a brand competing for their business.
Finally, big data will play a crucial role in the future of B2B marketing. With big data businesses quickly developing insights and determining which marketing strategies lead to the highest success rates.
It could also be more specific showing evidence of what type of email triggers the largest conversions. Technology and data will both play vital roles in B2B marketing both online and offline.
It will allow the personal marketing tactics we mentioned earlier and ensure that marketing strategies can be quickly put in place that matches the traits and variables of a key business client.
We hope this helps you understand what B2B marketing is and how it differs from typical promotional campaigns, the tactics you can use and the future trends of this industry.