B2B marketing normally entails a longer sales cycle than B2C marketing, and usually has a pretty narrow focus for their target audience: VPs and C-Suite level executives. That said, B2B marketing is not easy. There are lots tactics that work, and many tactics that don’t. If there’s one thing to take away from this blog post on what works for B2B marketing, it is this: your mantra needs to be “help, don’t sell”.
Keeping that mantra in mind, in this blog post we’re discussing B2B marketing tips every small and medium-sized business should be focusing on:
Content Marketing
The “Help, don’t sell” concept means that B2B marketers must focus on addressing pain points and answering questions for their target market. B2B clients and customers are normal people, like you and me. They respond to emotional messaging much more quickly and deeply than a sales pitch.
Storytelling is the best way to do this. If you can engage a prospect with content that gets their interest, leverages emotions, and shows them how to solve one of their problems – that is the golden ticket.
A secondary benefit of content that sells benefits to customers is that it positions your company as a thought leader in the industry, which gains respect and rockets you ahead of your competitors.
Social Media Marketing
If you’re still on the fence about the need for social media marketing in a B2B context, please consider this statistic: 55% of B2B buyers say they search for product/vendor information on social media (Source). Social media has become one of the preferred ways for businesses to distribute valuable, relevant content to attract prospects and increase sales.
If you are already engaging fully in social media marketing, make sure you are ramping up the use of visuals. Visuals (infographics, images, charts, etc.) have become essential: 85% of marketers use visuals and 73% plan to increase their use of visuals according to the 2017 Social Media Marketing Report from Social Media Examiner.
In addition, live video is on the rise with 61% of marketers planning to use live video services such as Facebook Live, Periscope and Instagram live video.
Speaking of Facebook, many small and medium-sized businesses are not convinced that Facebook is a good platform for them. Well, in what we’d call a shocking twist, Facebook has surpassed LinkedIn as the most important platform for B2B marketers in the Social Media Examiner report cited above. The verdict: time to get busy on a Facebook business page, if you don’t yet have one or have not been active!
Lastly, Facebook carousel ads and dynamic ads are expected to gain traction in for the end of 2017 and into 2018.
Mobile
By now, most businesses have optimized websites for mobile. However, B2B companies have always safely assumed that their customers would be researching products and solutions on their desktop. The latest research shows, however, that savvy and busy executives are using smartphones to research products and solutions while they are on the go. The takeaway here is to be sure your content is optimized for users on all types of mobile devices.
The next thing to think about from a mobile perspective is the growing popularity of voice search. People are increasingly using voice search on their smartphones. Start considering this when generating content for your B2B prospects and customers; focus on question-based queries with a conversational tone. Think of it this way: instead of typing “Orange County marketing firms”, a voice search user might say “who are the best Orange County marketing companies?”
Hope we gave you food for thought and ideas you can use to pump up your B2B marketing strategies! Questions? Feel free to Contact us through our website or call 877.609.3840. We are here to help!
