Andrew Raso December 1, 2021

When it comes to marketing to a B2B audience, regular B2C marketing strategies simply don’t cut it.

Business audiences have different needs, goals, budgets…and what captures their attention in a sea of digital marketing is typically very distinct from what will work with a consumer market.

At the end of the day, you need to tailor your marketing strategies to your target audience. But you already know that. You know that the B2B buyer’s journey is completely different to the B2C buyer. And that requires a complete rethink of your digital marketing tactics.

Don’t waste your precious budget on digital marketing strategies that have no chance of success. There are no winners in that game.

Instead, look to what the data and evidence are telling you to create a surefire B2B marketing pathway for your business.

In this ultimate guide to B2B marketing, I’m going to strip it back to basics to give you an overview of what is working in B2B marketing right now along with ideas of how you can make the most of those marketing strategies for your brand.

Quick chapter links

What is the role of B2B marketing?

If you are a business that sells products and services to other businesses then you are in the B2B, i.e. business to business, marketing space. B2B business categories often include things like SaaS subscriptions, business accounting, manufacturing, distribution, office supplies or IT, just to name a few.

Some businesses will have both B2B sales and consumer customer groups for their products and services. If that is the case for you, you’ll need to have two different arms to your sales and marketing strategy that speak to each audience separately.

The decision-makers in B2B marketing are usually teams and committees such as a finance committee on a board or the procurement team in a business. Depending on your product or service, the considerations that drive purchasing decisions are not just product features and choice but also return on investment.

The B2B companies that do digital marketing well are the ones who understand their audience inside and out. And they make sure their lead generation efforts and sales funnel are matched to the buyer’s journey.

B2B vs B2C: what’s the difference?

1. Purchase motivators

B2C: Driven by emotion

Consider the B2C target audience. They have a problem and they need to fix it. You have the solution.

Some examples of consumer problems might be that they are:

  • Wanting to avoid putting their pet through the stress of driving to the vet
  • Overwhelmed by a disorganised home
  • Unsure of what to wear to an upcoming wedding
  • In need of help for an upcoming university exam

In each case, there is emotion attached to the problem. They are worried, overwhelmed, uncertain or stressed. You can subtly appeal to those emotions in your marketing to show how your products or services are the answer.

B2B audience: Driven by logic

Now consider the B2B target audience and their problems. Examples of these might include that they:

  • Need to replace or upgrade the technology across the business
  • Looking to improve company’s culture or productivity
  • Are looking to change office cleaning companies to reduce costs
  • Want to generate leads through digital marketing
  • Seeking to find new ways to help their business grow in the digital space

In these cases, the way you market is less about appealing to their emotions and more about a logical process of showing how your products or services will deliver ROI.

Image credit: Zoovu 

2. Target audience

B2C: Speak to the individual

The B2C audience is generally one person, or often a couple. Your marketing efforts can speak directly to that buyer persona, who can make a decision fairly easily about whether they are going to buy from you. In some cases, they will need to speak to a partner before making a purchase. Depending on the price of your product or service, you may only need one or two touchpoints with the customer to hook them to buy your product.

B2B: Speak to key decision-makers in the organisation

B2B on the other hand is more complex. Rather than talking to an individual, you need to appeal to a team of people. The larger the organisation, the larger the group of people who will be making the decision.

This is an important factor to remember in how you engage your customers in your marketing campaigns. Think about the decision-makers who will be involved in the process, and create a buyer persona for each of these audiences. Then create a holistic marketing strategy that talks to each of them.

3. Decision-making process

B2C: Short time and path to conversion

A B2C customer can hit the buy now button with relative ease. With B2C marketing you can create funnels to establish needs and educate the consumer about your product. There is a degree of flexibility with how the consumer will interact with your brand and the funnel gives them various opportunities to purchase.

B2B: Longer path to conversion with more decision-makers

The B2B customer journey is similar to B2C in that there’s an awareness, consideration, and conversion stage:

Image credit: Hubspot

However, because of the number of people involved in B2B decision-making, the time to convert is generally longer and prospects need more convincing at each stage of the journey.

In B2B marketing, more open and direct communication is required. Once you’ve established the relationship there will be more back and forth as you both work to determine if you are a good fit.

Here’s a great example of how the complex B2B buying process can unfold:

Image credit: Gartner Analysis

Because of this, you need to develop relevant content that appeals to different stakeholders at each part of the buyer’s journey. The amount and type of content will vary significantly from B2C, because you’re speaking to different audiences and providing different information throughout the purchase process:

Image credit: Hubspot

4. Building relationships

B2C: Build transactional relationships

B2C marketing tends to be more transactional. Potential consumers may also only make one or a few purchases throughout their customer lifecycle. The long-term value of your current customers is lower than that with a B2B audience.

B2B: Cultivate personal, long-term relationships

And that’s why the focus of B2B marketers is on building long-term relationships. Lead generation and personal relationship building are far more important than sending your customers down a funnel.

Repeat and referral marketing from a B2B customer can be the difference between sink or swim for your business. This requires meaningful relationships based on consistency and delivering on your brand promises.

B2B marketing strategies and channels

Now, let’s get into the juicy part – the best marketing strategies and channels that are working for B2B businesses, right now. These aren’t outdated B2B digital strategies from a decade ago. These are the methods businesses like yours are implementing to get results today.

One thing I want you to remember is that you can’t measure marketing success unless you have defined your marketing goals. A B2B company that has well-defined goals will have a much better chance of success than B2B companies that are floundering with no B2B digital marketing strategy attached to their overarching business strategy.

B2B digital marketing

Start with your website

If a business customer landed on your site right now, what would they think of your brand?

  • Would they see a perfect representation of your brand?
  • Do they get a solid understanding of your products or services?
  • Is it easy to navigate?
  • Is it mobile friendly? Fast? Modern?
  • Is it optimised for lead generation?

You can find a lot of this information by peeking under the hood of your website through Google Analytics. You’ll quickly be able to see which marketing channels are bringing in the most traffic, the share of traffic on mobile devices versus desktop, the demographic of your website visitors, and more.

Your website is quite crucial to your marketing strategy. Without it, you won’t be found via the search engines (more on that later) or have a home for your content. You won’t be able to take advantage of paid ads and when you send an email to your customers, you won’t have anywhere to direct them.

Optimise for search

Before interacting with a website, the average B2B buyer conducts 12 different online searches (Google).

Image credit: Backlinko

While B2B customers may click through multiple Google search results to find the product they are looking for, B2B customers also have more of a time crunch. Their primary focus is to find a solution to their problem. And they need to find it quickly. 25% of searchers only click on the first search result. If you’re not in the top position, you are potentially missing out on significant traffic, leads and sales to other companies.

Search engine optimisation is the answer. And it’s mission-critical for B2B marketers.

Optimising your website for search rankings is a long term strategy that can deliver a stellar return on your marketing investment.

You need to take a multi-pronged approach to look at both on and off page elements of SEO in order to drive the best results.

By identifying your keywordscreating relevant content to anticipate your customer concerns and optimising elements such as page speed while also developing a solid backlinking strategy you are on the right path to dominate the search results.

You’ll also need to factor in technical SEO tactics as part of your SEO efforts. This factor is often overlooked by B2B companies, despite being one of the most fundamental pillars to SEO success. Technical SEO involves ensuring that all the code on your website is up to scratch, from your site redirects to fixing broken links, SSL encryption, structured data, crawlability, indexability, and more. When your technical game is on point, it makes it easier for Google to quickly crawl and index your website, and display it to searchers.

Invest in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Search engine optimisation is a long term strategy with exceptional ROI. But PPC advertising is a powerful way to capture quick wins and generate leads. Spending on digital advertising is set to reach $375 billion by 2021 (eMarketer).

While your search engine rankings are steadily growing, PPC ads like Google Ads can help you to get in front of new audiences who otherwise may not be able to find you. If you are in a highly competitive market, search ads will also help increase your brand exposure and awareness over your competition.

B2B Content Marketing

The cornerstone of your SEO strategy is B2B content marketing. But it also plays a huge role in educating your customers and demonstrating your expertise.

Go beyond blog posts in your content strategy

Content marketing for B2C audiences generally centres around creating relevant content through blog posts and infographics. But B2B marketers should think bigger. Blog posts are essential for SEO, but beyond that your digital content marketing efforts should involve formats such as white papers, eBooks and original research. Publishing thought leadership content on relevant industry websites can also help to boost your profile, not to mention add valuable backlinks to your website.

Match your content to the touchpoints

Your customers may need various touchpoints with your business before they are ready to make a purchase. As we’ve mentioned, before making a purchase, B2B researchers will generally do 12 online searches. The more content you have that provides solutions to their problems – and the higher that content appears in the search engine rankings – the closer you will be to the sale.

B2B Social Media Marketing

Leverage LinkedIn B2B Marketing

Most of the strategies I’ve already mentioned are focused on your owned assets – building your website, optimising it and investing in PPC ads so your customers can find you and then filling it with informative and engaging content. But a true omni channel strategy, the type that will deliver the best results, draws on other channels, like social media.

Before you dismiss social media marketing as the realm of B2C marketers, consider that 84% of B2B executives turn to social media as part of their decision-making process. Social media networks are not something you can afford to ignore in your B2B digital marketing mix.

LinkedIn is the platform of choice for B2B marketers. And it works. 80% of social media marketing leads come from LinkedIn.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn Ad:

Your social media strategy should be focused on building brand awareness. It may be the first touchpoint a customer has with your brand and it’s the ideal place to be sharing the valuable information you are creating through your content marketing strategy.

Run Facebook Ads

Although LinkedIn is the go-to choice for B2B marketers, Facebook is another powerful tool that should be included in your B2B marketing strategy. In fact, 74% of business decision-makers spend more time on Facebook than other people on the platform.

If you want to get the most out of Facebook as one of your social media channels, start with Facebook Ads. Run social media ads with Brand Awareness, Traffic, Lead Gen and Conversion objectives, and focus on reaching your audience with laser-focused precision through Facebook’s powerful suite of targeting options.

B2B Email Marketing

59% of B2B marketers say that email marketing is their top revenue channel. Email presents a huge opportunity for your business.

Email marketing has been a superstar for both B2C and B2B marketers for years. And it is showing no signs of slowing down for many reasons.

When you capture an email address from a lead, email marketing is a great way to educate your market, demonstrate your expertise and build relationships – all at scale. You can share new product news, testimonials, blog posts and white papers to demonstrate ROI.

But inboxes today are more crowded than ever. The challenge for B2B marketers is to cut through the noise, show value and be consistent.

Here’s a great example from Grammarly:

Image credit: Mailerlite

How do you create a marketing strategy for B2B?

The strongest B2B marketing strategies make the most of an omni channel approach. The decision and buying process of B2B marketers isn’t unlike a B2C customer.

They have a problem, they research a solution and then they ultimately choose a product or service that solves their problem.

Your strategy starts with understanding your audience and their pain points and then building a plan to demonstrate how your business has the solution. Whether you’re starting new with a go-to-market strategy or you are working to grow an established brand, you must consider the entire buying journey of your customer personas.

B2B marketing examples

There are no templates for B2B marketing strategies. And if anyone tries to sell you one you should be very wary. The most successful marketing strategies are targeted to the customers and tailored to the brand.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t take inspiration from brands who have absolutely nailed their B2B marketing strategies. Take a look at these B2B marketing examples to get you thinking about how you can drive effective B2B marketing in your business. These companies in these examples are total digital marketing goals and will help you get a better understanding of exactly what it takes to succeed with B2B marketing.

Canva

I mentioned earlier that LinkedIn is the place to be for B2B business marketers. But as with anything to do with B2B marketing, there are no hard and fast rules.

Take Canva for example. This one business has positioned itself as a rule breaker, bringing graphic design to the mainstream. They also know that LinkedIn isn’t going to bring them the customers they need. Instead, Instagram is where they shine.

As a graphic design tool, Canva is all about the visuals. Hence why they do so well on Instagram – a highly visual platform.

Why is Canva such a great example of B2B social media marketing? Not only are they highlighting the capability of their product through each and every tile they design, but they are also shining a spotlight on their customers.

The beauty of this strategy is how Canva approaches showcasing their features and benefits through their content. Rather than boring tutorials, they use their customers to showcase the capability of the platform. The whole premise of Canva is about simplifying graphic design to the masses and this strategy is the perfect way to demonstrate this.

They have a clear understanding of their market – solo operators, bootstrapped startups and marketing teams who need a cost-effective, easy to use solution to turn around graphic design jobs with ease. And their B2B marketing strategy is perfectly tailored to meet those customers where they are.

HubSpot

When it comes to B2B content marketing strategy, HubSpot‘s marketing team is king. Their website is packed with resources on a huge range of topics related to their core service – CRM and marketing automation software.

Through their content marketing strategy, HubSpot has established their expertise and given away tonnes of useful information to their potential customers. And it’s not just blogs. They publish eBooks, white papers, webinars and templates all designed to be super helpful for their customers.

The content is all optimised for SEO and has multiple opportunities throughout to capture email addresses for their database. They also excel at email marketing, tapping into their insights to build a connection with their potential customers.

Atlassian

Atlassian has a substantial offering across a wide range of tech products for businesses. But their website is built for ease and simplicity.

As soon as you land on the homepage there is a statement that clearly explains what they do. The menu is very simple with dropdowns that help the user to navigate to the right solution for their concern. For busy B2B customers who value time and ease, Atlassian have absolutely nailed it.

Scrolling down the page, you can see that what Atlassian does really well is to sell solutions, not products. They are selling the ability for teams to work more collaboratively and for more projects to run more smoothly. The products – Jira, Trello and others – are just the tools to achieve that.

What I like about this is it shows that B2B marketing strategy doesn’t have to follow a highly corporate formula. The language is more casual to suit the Atlassian brand, but that doesn’t take anything away from the strength of the message.

Deputy

The Deputy website is another great B2B digital marketing example that showcases a really well planned user experience.

Again, they are selling the solution to a problem – simplifying shift work – and not just a product. The menu is easy to navigate, with clear calls to action.

Deputy also has a clever approach to email marketing. They have created resources like ebooks, which are available to download in exchange for an email address. They are generating leads and creating a sales funnel of customers who could benefit from their product.

MailChimp

MailChimp is an example of how less is more can often be a good approach to email marketing.

Courier is MailChimp’s content marketing arm where they publish digital marketing insights, resources, trends and expert commentary. That in itself is a great example of B2B content marketing.

But what MailChimp does really well via Courier is a simple approach to email marketing. This is a business that is used by 13 million small businesses to send their emails!

When a customer signs up to the Courier newsletter they see this notification. “You’re all set. Keep a lookout for your first issue of Courier Weekly, coming this Friday.”

There is no instant email. No daily series as part of a sales funnel. Customers aren’t bombarded or adding additional unwanted emails to their already clogged inboxes.

They make their potential customers a simple promise of consistency.

Salesforce

Salesforce is another great example of B2B social media marketing done well. This time on LinkedIn.

With an enticing visual and a short, sharp caption, this post will stop the scroll and pique interest. The mistake many marketers make on LinkedIn is to go too hard with the corporate messaging and branding. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Posts and ads need to make people stop and listen to what you have to say. And this post ticks all the boxes.

The Gurus in B2B marketing

At OMG we love to sink our teeth into B2B marketing strategy. We always look to data and evidence to guide our decisions to turn your digital marketing strategy into a lead generating machine.

We offer a free B2B marketing strategy session to set you off on the right foot with your marketing strategy. During the session you’ll have the full focus of one of our B2B marketing Gurus who will look at your marketing plans and performance to date to uncover the hidden gold and marketing opportunities in your business.

B2B companies that want serious results turn to OMG.

About the Author

Andrew Raso

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