The Ultimate Guide to B2B Digital Marketing

B2B Digital Marketing - What Are The Fundamentals?

B2B marketing exchanges a huge chunk of money in the digital marketing world today. There's a significant increase in the number of these figures as the market is expanding. Several markets stay focused on B2C marketing however we can see a significant expansion in the former type as the market is opening doors for new possibilities.

As there are a huge variety of channels available it can be a game-changer for the present B2B companies. If you haven't got a strategy for this market already, you might miss out on a huge potential and here in this guide, we will explain great marketing tips. Let us start with the definition itself:

The meaning of this type of marketing comes from its full form where the options are available from business to business. This type of marketing strategy is about selling your products to other businesses and companies that try to expand with those items. These industries include tools that are useful for other businesses. The easiest approachable examples are SEMRush, Moz which plans on targeting market managers.

What are the major differences between B2B and B2C?

The first difference that the intended audience in both cases is different. While one focuses majorly on marketing, the other tends to serve the end-user or customer. There are various factors on the basis of which one decides their audiences, for example, their age, gender, location, income, and other factors or details about the potential customer.

A lot of people might think it is the same thing when selling a product to a user, however, selling in business and selling to an individual is a lot different. Hence, the strategies have to be planned differently too. B2B audiences are financially driven by customer-attracting ideas, financial incentives and on the other hand, an individual consumer is more driven to having fun and emotional contentment.

There needs to be more critical planning in case of B2B selling like the other party will seek authentication of knowledge and hence the strategy demands education, not entertainment.

To understand the difference more clearly let us dive into the concept of a marketing funnel.

Anyone who has been in the industry has heard of the term marketing funnel that helps divide the journey of a customer into different stages. This helps in developing knowledge about the different marketing stages and which channel is the best for the customer journey. This helps in creating a strategy that drives consistent customers and leads to better conversions.

Here are the different marketing funnel stages:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Intent
• Evaluation
• Purchase

How These Stages Work

1. A consumer, in search of a product where he has no clue about your company is in the awareness stage as you can target them to create awareness about your firm and that you are offering something that is quite useful for them. You must be a reliable authority in order to gain the company's trust.
2. Once you start creating awareness about your product, the customers may or may not take interest in your offerings. If they do, then you can take the conversation further with what you have to offer them and how these items can benefit their business. This part takes longer in the case of B2B marketing, it can be from days to months. However, B2C marketing, awareness can be done within hours.
3. The consideration stage goes like the name itself that your potential customer is considering your offerings by paying attention to the reviews and how you have fulfilled the past demands. They are interested in knowing about the customer relationship and the evidence can help them build trust. This follows the same time parameters as interest.
4. When the intention of purchasing is clear, but there are still some thoughts around the product, in B2C you can connect over call, and in B2B both the parties can plan a meeting or demo. This stage is followed by evaluation so that the customer is sure that they are buying exactly what they want and only after revealing complete information the final step of purchase is taken, where the prospect becomes a customer or a client.
5. All these stages are much more complex to what they might seem in words. Especially when it comes to B2B marketing, the idea can take much longer to manifest into a real deal. This is because there isn't a single person taking the decision, it's a group, team, or a firm where the entire content is read through, and only after that, a plan is made. The strategies to prepare can be challenging as in B2B marketing it is not an individual, but a group brainstorming the requirements exactly.
6. Now, let us see how can we conduct the practice and connect with potential buyers. There are traditional methods to do it and there are new methods. The traditional ones include trade shows, radio advertisement, TV advertisement, referrals, direct mail, connecting over a call. All of these are outbound methods, hence these often seemed to be very problematic. There's a hope connected that the leads will follow only after you have reached them for conversation, however, this could be annoying for people on the receiving end.
7. Outbound generally remains on a decline because you are trying to evoke interest. The present methods support the individual's intention and brands will only continue to convert a deal when an individual is truly interested. As the outbound methods were taking too much investment of time and money yet the results were on a downfall, hence the digital marketing aptitude had to grow.

When it comes to B2B Marketing a mix of both traditional and digital marketing follows up the process. There are strategies prepared around both the techniques and then different organizations are targeted without really making an individual contact. The targeting practice has to be on point or to say that it must appeal to the customers. There's no guesswork in the present marketing techniques and the channels have to be accessed via SEO, Email, Social Media, PPC, and these are reached via in-depth practices to reach the right customers.

SEO marketing includes several aspects where the function of Google bots becomes a lot easier and your website rank is improved. It certainly happens due to indexing and when someone searches a keyword on the search bar, Google picks the next indexed option to return to the seeker.

As we can understand the significant role of SEO in today's market, let us know its different types:

On-page SEO - Here, you can see everything on the page, copy, images, header tags, and a lot of other information. When content is written only to meet SEO requirements and targeting keywords with low quality, Google will easily find that out and your rank will suffer. Only good content matters for the search engine wants to deliver quality information to the end reader/user. Hence, take care that you are using appropriate tags, keywords, meta, high-quality images, podcasts, webinars, infographics, white papers, and other elements.

Off-page SEO - This is where everything happens at places other than your own website. This is more about getting backlinks from trusted portals to your website.

There are two ways to build these links, one is good and one is bad. If you try to build backlinks with spam, Google will penalize you for that. Hence, your best practices must include building links from trusted websites only with the help of quality content. Ensure that you are not paying for backlinks, because at the end of the day, only organic links count.

Technical SEO - We have heard about the terms Sitemaps, meta tags, and other technical requirements that convey your website to Google and help in indexing. This falls in the third category, Technical SEO.

The entire SEO practices together help in building a trustworthy platform. It plays a pivotal role in building a great B2B business online. If there's any technical glitch related to internal links, HTTPS, Correct indexing, fixing crawl errors, improving site speed, permanent redirects, mobile-friendly interface, adding structured data, and much more has to be taken care of with the help of technical SEO.

There are tools that can help you with fixing the above-mentioned problems. This can help in the search engine results page and that your website ranks better. By implementing the corrections the load time, usability and functionality can be improved.

B2B Email Marketing

Email marketing has been a source of marketing for ages and the truth is it is one of the most popular channels and they offer great engagement with the B2B marketers. Hence this is an opportunity to grab for lead conversion. It is an amazing tool where you can educate your potential clients or existing ones to increase customer loyalty. It also helps in creating a better bond with the audience. You must not be just up-selling items rather offer important information to your clients in order to keep them connected with you.

There are certain guidelines you must follow and that includes not spamming your subscribers, however, remind them about your business with 1 to 5 emails in a month.

Increasing your open rate gets heightened with an enticing subject line. The taglines must entice the person and as they go through the information, they must have a want to connect with you. Stick to one particular information and it must increase the click-through rate. This is the best way to decrease your unsubscribe rate too. Ensure that you are following the right guidelines when following any method to approach people.

There are other methods to promote your business as mentioned below:

Social Media Marketing - This will help your brand spread more awareness and build authority over the market. It is about showing potential customers that you are a good deal to purchase from. There are several platforms on which you can follow the promoting practices to reach most people.

PPC Marketing - PPC marketing technique helps with the advertisements that are distinguished into search ads, display ads, and social ads. All the three run on different algorithms, but intend to appeal to the customers so they make a purchase.

Search ads appear in front of a user when he/she is searching for an item and the search engines delivers some online results.

Display ads are automatically presented to the seeker with the help of search preferences etc. A lot of times people get advertisements for their preferred category, one can also call it Remarketing.

Social ads are the ones that appear on your social media handles. These advertisements have a lot to do with the user's behavior and what he searches for on social media.

Final Word

Hence, we conclude with the several techniques for B2B marketing, people must always follow the best practices in order to get consistent results that give you market authority. The best way to avail the benefits is to hire a consultant or an expert as they have knowledge around the practice.