10 Digital Marketing Strategies for B2B Companies

Did you know that 56% of business-to-business (B2B) organizations invest in digital marketing? To stay ahead of competitors, business-to-business (B2B) marketers like you should have some digital marketing tips and tricks up their sleeves.

Before diving into the B2B digital marketing strategies you can use, however, it’s important to understand what online marketing for B2B is. In addition, it pays to know the benefits of digital marketing strategies for B2B companies, so you can get the green light from management and better execute your plans for your organization.

What is B2B digital marketing?

B2B digital marketing refers to any online marketing strategy or tactic intended to promote your business to another organization. If you’re promoting products or services to another business (instead of an individual consumer) online, you’re most likely employing B2B digital marketing.

Some channels that B2B companies can use for their online marketing efforts are:

  • Company website
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Content marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

How does B2B marketing differ from B2C marketing?

In the B2B space, your customers are other businesses. In the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector, they’re individuals who are making purchases for themselves rather than their company.

B2B marketing and B2C marketing intersect in many ways and use many of the same channels, but there are important differences that require you to use different approaches for each.

  • In B2B, there are often multiple stakeholders whom you need to convince through your marketing and sales efforts. In B2C, there’s typically just one decision-maker.
  • B2B tends to involve longer sales cycles due to factors such as having multiple stakeholders and larger, more complex purchases.
  • The B2B sales process often involves salespeople and account managers, while B2C customers often make purchases directly.
  • B2B purchase decisions are more heavily influenced by motivators like logic and financial incentives as well as metrics like return on investment (ROI).

What are the benefits of B2B digital marketing?

B2B digital marketing enables you to increase brand awareness, communicate the value of your product or service, and, ultimately, convert more of your audience into customers.

Some of the more specific benefits of B2B digital marketing include:

You can use precise targeting

With B2B digital marketing, you can precisely target the potential customers who are most likely to convert based on their demographics, firmographics, and online activity. You can even identify and target individual users who visit your website. This contrasts with traditional marketing, which often targets a broad audience, leading to less precision and higher costs.

You can reach stakeholders throughout the buyer journey

B2B marketing involves a longer buyer journey, and it’s important to engage with potential customers throughout the buying process. 

With digital marketing, you can reach buyers at the very start of their journey when they’re typically searching for information online. You can then use other digital marketing channels, such as online advertising and email marketing, to move them through the funnel and keep them engaged.

You can measure your results and adjust as you go

With digital marketing tactics, measuring your campaigns’ success and results is easy. There are many digital marketing tools available that enable you to identify which strategies drove the best results for your B2B business.

As you measure the success of your campaigns, you can use the information you gather to adjust your strategies as you go, improving your marketing performance and ROI.

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10 digital marketing strategies for B2B companies

Now that we know what B2B digital marketing is and why it’s important, let’s go through 10 B2B digital marketing strategies that you can use to acquire new customers and grow your revenue:

1. Specify your business’s positioning

A critical first step before executing any other B2B marketing strategy is understanding your brand positioning.

Positioning is the strategy of finding a unique spot for your b2b brand in the mind of your customers. Put simply, it’s setting your business apart from everyone else so that people can easily remember your unique identity. As a result, your business will have an improved image and enjoy increased loyalty among customers.

Understanding your positioning helps you market your business and products more effectively. It can also help you craft marketing messages that resonate well with your target audience.

2. Understand your target audience

Identify your target customers or businesses who are looking for your products or services. If you have a customer relationship management (CRM) software like Nutshell that houses your client database, use this information to create and segment buyer personas.

Your buyer personas will guide your B2B digital marketing strategies and campaigns. These personas inform you of the pain points of your customers and how they search for solutions to their needs.

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3. Have a user-friendly B2B website

Leave a good impression on your customers by having a well-designed and informative website. Plan your site content, taking into consideration your buyer personas’ needs and pain points.

To earn the trust of prospects, make sure your B2B website is easy to navigate, responsive, and mobile-friendly. Make it easy for site visitors to take important actions on your website, like downloading your case studies, signing up for your newsletter, or filling out your form.

Are your calls-to-action visible and clickable even on mobile? Mind your site pages’ load speeds so your customers don’t bounce off your site.

4. Help customers find you with search engine optimization (SEO)

Did you know that 33% of B2B companies say that SEO is their top lead generator? Use this effective online marketing tactic for B2B businesses so you don’t get left behind by your competitors.

Most B2B consumers conduct online searches before making a purchase offline, so it makes sense for you to invest in SEO. With a good SEO strategy, your website pages rank high in relevant search results. The impact? More prospects can find your website, learn more about your products and services, and turn into business customers.

5. Offer valuable information and insights with content marketing

Another B2B marketing strategy that you can employ is content marketing. Useful content like blog posts, white papers, case studies, and informational videos improve your credibility among B2B customers, increasing their chances of shortlisting your business.

Content marketing also complements your SEO efforts. Create content that your buyer personas may be looking for, and they’ll land on your website, giving you a chance to eventually convert them into customers. 

Do you want to make sure your brand is visible among B2B shoppers throughout their customer journey? Create content for every stage in the customer journey, so they can discover your business from when they’re in their initial research stage up to when they’re ready to purchase products or services.

6. Nurture your leads and strengthen customer relationships with email marketing

An excellent way to reach B2B customers, email marketing touts a return on investment of $44 for every $1 invested. Use email marketing to nurture your leads who signed up for your newsletter or downloaded your white paper. 

Put to good use the contacts in your CRM by sending personalized emails to your customers. To increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, segment your customers and share useful content with each persona segment. 

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7. Connect with your customers through social media marketing

Did you know that 75% of B2B buyers use social media before making a purchase? Create a social media page for your business on the platforms that your B2B customers use.

You can use your social media pages to promote your website and repurpose content as short videos or shareable infographics. Another B2B digital marketing strategy you can employ on social media is paid ads. You can target your existing customer segments and lookalikes of existing customers to expand your reach.

8. Run pay-per-click (PPC) ads if your budget allows

Investing in PPC ads allows you to promote your content and brand to your target audience on search, social media, and other advertising channels. In addition, you can gather first-party data through PPC lead-generation campaigns. When running PPC campaigns, make sure you’re showing relevant ads to the right persona segments. 

9. Leverage the power of influencer marketing

One growing strategy for B2B marketing is influencer marketing, which involves working with leading content creators to promote your brand, product, or service on social media or other online channels.

For example, if your business sells automation software for accounting, you might work with influencers who make content about tech or accounting. These influencers might create a review or how-to video about using your software or mention it in an Instagram post about their favorite tools.

Influencers’ audiences can range from millions of followers to less than 10,000. What’s more important than audience size is finding an influencer who fits with your brand and has an engaged audience that’s likely to include your potential customers. 

10. Use automation to enhance efficiency

Another emerging B2B digital marketing strategy is using automation to improve efficiency, enable personalization, and analyze campaigns. There are many tools available that can help you integrate automation into your marketing strategy.

For example, a CRM can help you streamline your marketing processes by automatically pulling in customer data, sending email campaigns, and more.

Let’s team up to create B2B digital marketing strategies that drive growth

Digital marketing can help your B2B business acquire new leads and increase your revenue. If you need help with planning and executing your B2B digital marketing strategies, look no further than our partners at WebFX. They’ve helped their clients generate over $3 billion in revenue.

Follow the link below to inquire about their digital marketing services.

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