You wish that your business would reach its peak. To ensure this, you must be ready with your messages that are targeted to your audience. While creating your messages, you must make the personas and consider the demographics of your target audience. It is essential to note that your marketing strategies for targeting consumers and businesses must be separate. Professional companies have a distinct behavioral pattern that is different from consumers. There must be a documented strategy that you must adhere to for targeting your prospects. This article will discuss some of the B2B marketing strategies that you can employ to ensure business growth.
Do proper research
There is a deep research required regarding external factors of your industry, industry growth and ever changing behavioral patterns. You can also loop in information from within your organization and contact the sales and account management teams to understand any such changes that can be included in your communication plans. A research-based communication plan is a stepping-stone to success and allows senior management to make data-driven decisions. It will help the organization to outline exponential growth in the long run.
Drive your USP
It would be best to research your competition to find out the features they offer and the strategy solution. It will form the basis of creating a unique proposition that your product and service portfolio will try to provide to your target market. Try to target a niche area that has relatively lesser footprints.
Customize your website
It is essential to customize your website to ensure it is in line with your communication messages. Your most critical message should be on the banner of the homepage. It will help visitors know your message upfront and right when they land up on your site. However, you must bear in mind that the visitors may land up anywhere on your site and not necessarily on the landing page. You must have proper information across the site and lead the visitors to the portions of the site that you wish them to visit.
Your website is the primary source of information for your visitors. You must show your thought leadership in the industry through a cleverly created workflow that will guide your visitors through the buyer’s journey. The workflow must entice the visitors to take the necessary actions that you wished for. There must be appropriate CTAs at various points on the website. A meticulously drafted case study or a whitepaper can work wonders with your audience.
Build trust on your site
Trust is a significant factor that allows visitors to have an opinion about your business. You must move your website to an HTTPS platform. It will encrypt the communication that the visitor’s browser has with your webserver. If you have multiple domain and sub-domains, you no need to worry! A multi domain wildcard SSL will suffice, and you do not need other SSL certificates.
The use of SSL certificates has been mandated by web browsers like Google, which marks non-HTTPS sites as “Not Secure.” Even studies show that a whopping 90.2% of browsing time on Google is spent on HTTPS sites. Non-HTTPS sites lead your visitors to move from your website to your competition, and they would never return to your site again. Since 2014, search engines have also been tanking the rankings of non-HTTPS sites.
Being mobile-friendly
Given that your target market would ideally be tech-savvy, they would possibly be accessing your website through their smartphones when they are either traveling to work or returning home. Research shows that at least 70% of B2B queries will be done over smartphones. There should be an ideal strategy to attract the target market when major queries are done from mobile phones. A responsive website is an ideal point to start. It is also a necessity for SEO as search engines may tank your rankings if your website is not suited for mobile users.
You must utilize the fonts and white space wisely to ensure easy readability for the visitors. The call-to-action (CTA) buttons must be positioned in such a position that they are easily accessible. Also, the size of these buttons must be appropriate to allow visitors to see them properly when they are on the device.
Presence on social media
The need for the right presence on social media occupies a pivotal place among all B2B marketing strategies. Studies show that the ideal social media channel for B2B communication is LinkedIn. It is the ideal platform for B2B marketers to reach out to the target market through periodic posts, including content, infographics, videos, etc.
You can also create communities and close groups with your audience, discussing the critical happenings in the industry. Be the initiator of discussions that will project you as a thought leader in the industry.[1] You can also write articles on topics that would keep your audience interested. It will act as an accelerator for your expertise and aid in your outreach to your target market.
Optimizing for search engines
Your business needs to have a high rank in the keyword search. A high search rank will help to improve business among your target market. While the ranking factors remain the same across the B2B and B2C segments, you need to tweak your SEO strategy while targeting the B2B clients. It becomes essential to understand that you need to optimize your keyword search. You do not need to go behind thousands of keywords but focus on those that your target audience is bound to use in their search queries.
The content strategy also needs to change. It would help if you focused on topics that will seem attractive to your target persona. B2B content need not to be too stiff and boring. Also, it is critical to have a proper backlink strategy in place. You can have backlinks from your partners, alliances, etc.
The funnel is critical
B2B prospects are different from the B2C ones. The period for a B2B opportunity to mature can take months, and you have to continue to nurture the account over the entire period. It is equally essential to create targeted marketing material across the whole buyer’s journey. Remember the AIDA model!
Most organizations use a CRM tool to help them in their quest to continue addressing their B2B prospects. These tools can send out automated emails at predetermined intervals by following a preset workflow. Your target personas would love to be pampered with content as they continue to search for solutions across their problem areas. Providing your client with the relevant content allows you to be in touch with an entire lot of prospects at different buying cycle stages.
Using KPIs and analytics
It is crucial to select the ideal KPIs that will gauge your business’s present status. Your KPIs must be chosen based on changing business scenarios. Once the KPIs are finalized for the year, you must have the control points to measure the data. Several websites can help you in calculating the KPIs. Google Analytics can help you to measure the traffic to your website and the channels they usually take. There are other entities like Hubspot, who can be your ideal digital marketing partner. Similarly, you have to collect social media-related data and have a sneak peek into your competitors’ social media strategy.
Conclusion
It is critical to have a set of B2B marketing strategies in place to ensure that you have a robust pipeline of prospects. Your business must also enthuse trust among your audience. Shift your website to the HTTPS platform if not already done. The prospect pipeline must be nurtured regularly, and you must also write SEO-optimized content that will appeal to your target market. We have discussed some of the strategies that you can take to address the B2B segment to help you in your endeavor to win over your audience for business growth.