Guide: How to succeed with B2B marketing
Many companies that sell B2B are sales-driven organizations. It is not uncommon for a smaller organization to have no one working dedicatedly with marketing at all. However, the right marketing can have a significant effect on sales and make the work of salespeople easier. In this article, I give my advice on how you can succeed with B2B marketing.
How is B2B marketing different?
The biggest difference with B2B marketing compared to B2C marketing is that the sales cycle is usually significantly longer and more complex. For example, if you run an e-commerce store and sell phone cases, many purchases can be made on impulse, without much thought. This rarely or never happens if your customers are companies. Often, several people are involved in the decision and there is often a careful needs analysis and comparison with competitors.
This means that marketing primarily becomes important earlier in the purchasing process, and less important in the final purchasing decision.
Map your target audience
The most important thing to succeed with your marketing is to have an eye on your target audience. Make sure to answer the following questions:
1. What industry do our potential customers work in?
2. What role do they have?
3. What are their biggest challenges?
4. What are their most common questions during a first meeting with us?
5. What value do we add to the target group?
Once you have answered the above questions, you should keep this in mind when designing your marketing. The most common questions during an initial meeting with you can perhaps be answered on your website or in your social media?
Brand awareness - why it's important
How well-known your brand is and what attitude the target group has towards your brand can be difficult to measure, and therefore brand-building efforts are often prioritized.
When a salesperson cold calls or emails potential customers, a very small percentage are ready to make a purchase of the product or service being sold. However, if you have a strong brand and are “top of mind” when the customer realizes their need, the likelihood that the person will contact you increases. In addition, the chance that the customer will make a purchase is significantly higher compared to if the person has never heard of you before. If you can create a flow where potential customers contact you themselves, instead of your salespeople cold calling, the sales process will be both shorter and more efficient.
Lead generation
To build a strong brand, it’s a good idea to start working on lead generation. To do this, I recommend creating some kind of lead magnet. A lead magnet could be a free guide, a white paper, a webinar, or other form of content that you offer the recipient for free. To access the content, the recipient needs to provide their email address. You can then promote your lead magnet on social media and on your website.
Creating a lead magnet that appeals to your target audience can be an incredibly effective way to collect contact information for the people you want to reach. Once you have this contact information, the next step is to continue to process it and strengthen your brand image, perhaps through email marketing.
Working with email marketing
Email marketing is the channel that usually gives the best return in terms of sales. Send out a weekly newsletter to your contacts. Your newsletters should not be of a sales nature but rather educational. Write about tips, articles and other things that the target group may be interested in. This reminds the target group that you exist. In addition, they will perceive you as a knowledgeable player in your field.
As a complement to your newsletters, you can work with marketing automation. These are automatic email mailings that are based on what the recipient does. If a person downloads a whitepaper on a certain topic, you can use marketing automation to automatically send the contact an email with an offer relevant to what the text was about.
Build the right strategy for your business
In addition to email marketing and lead magnets, there are many different strategies for working effectively with B2B marketing. It is important that you create a strategy that suits your target audience and offering. Do you want help developing a marketing strategy? Please contact me at emelie@starrin.se and I will develop a proposal.