B2B digital marketing plays a vital role in business success today .
In recent years, investment efforts have grown towards increasingly omnichannel strategies , aimed at improving the customer experience, the pre-sales assistance service, the purchasing process and so on.
Today digital marketing for B2B is no longer in the shadow of that for B2C. The idea that only brands or companies that target the final consumer need an appropriate promotion on the web is absolutely wrong and obsolete.
B2B marketing has specific objectives that may concern:
- Brand Awareness
- Lead Generation
- Engagement
- Sales
- Customer Loyalty
- Customer Evangelism
- Upselling
In this sense, the roads and tools available to companies are very numerous.
Would you like to know more? Keep reading!
In this article we talk about:
- The philosophy of B2B marketing
- LinkedIn: A good barometer of B2B marketing growth
- The importance of the target audience: buyer personas
- The value of content
- B2B Digital Marketing tools, tactics and digital channels
- Blog and company website
- SEO
- Marketing & Advertising PPC (Pay Per Click)
- Social Media Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Email Marketing
The philosophy of B2B marketing
In Digital Marketing for B2B , the objectives must necessarily be different from those we would implement for a B2C company.
In the latter case, the strategy is usually oriented towards conversions, all thanks to a plan aimed at engaging users.
On the contrary, business to business companies think differently. In this case, the focus is on informing users of interest and building a solid reputation in their own reference niche. In this way the company will become a point of reference, increasing its brand awareness .
To obtain these results and maximize the effectiveness of any Digital Marketing campaign, the first and most important activity is to analyze and learn to know your audience in the most thorough way.
LinkedIn: A good barometer of B2B marketing growth
A demonstration of the importance of B2B Marketing ? LinkedIn !
This social network was invented precisely to connect professionals and companies, create networks, start new business relationships, provide after-sales assistance, share expertise and skills.
Today, behind all successful LinkedIn profiles or pages, there is a Digital Marketing strategy designed with the utmost attention to engage, interest, convince and entice prospects to get in touch with the professional or the company. Here’s how a new business relationship can start !
Recent statistics tell us that LinkedIn is now consideredthe most important marketing tool for companies, for which80%of theleadsgenerated come from this social network.
Keeping a profile or page active and populated with consistent and good quality contributions can be an excellent business card for the company and an interesting vehicle for establishing new relationships with potential customers, suppliers, partners and collaborators.
The importance of the target audience: buyer personas
In developing a strategy it is undoubtedly crucial to define what we want to communicate , how and where we want to distribute content. In this regard, there are so many channels available: social networks, websites, sector portals, e-mail marketing, blogs and more. But first of all it is necessary to define our target of interest : the so-called buyer personas .
Buyer personas are ideal representations of their consumers, real identikits that describe their audience in detail. But beware: the analysis of buyer personas consists of something more than asking a series of simple questions such as: “who do I want to talk to? Who do I contact? Who are my consumers? “
Undoubtedly these are basic characteristics that we will need to know, but there will still be many other aspects that we will have to deepen for each of our buyer personas. Eg:
- his work situation (role, position, ambition, seniority, skill)
- its demographic peculiarities
- his communication preferences
- his wishes
- his expectations
- the tools he uses in his work
- the type of business for which it operates
- his daily challenges
- the problems it has to solve
- your favorite news channels
- the way it communicates with its suppliers
- its relationship with digital platforms
As you can see, there are many factors that we could decide to analyze to create an identikit that is as relevant to reality as possible.
Buyer Personas are the “avatars” at the base of our entire B2B Digital Marketing strategy , and are therefore – in practical terms – almost always the figures who make purchasing decisions in a business or entrepreneurial context.
Analyzing the precious Big Data assets relating to already loyal and lost customers, to leads currently in negotiation, to prospects to be managed is another effective way to define precisely the buyer personas we will have to address.
Even the most free and creative brainstorming can help, for example if we want to evaluate sectors or types of companies that, although not yet affected by a particular product or service, could benefit from it.
At the end of the job, we will have at hand the “curriculum” of our potential customers on which to structure a targeted Digital Marketing strategy. However, it will always be important to keep in mind that each buyer persona will almost certainly have a different customer journey from that of the others.
The value of content
Given the fact that Digital Marketing for B2B aims to inform in order to increase its brand awareness in its reference sector, the quality of the content has a key value.
It should also be remembered that in the digital world the maxim ” Content is King ” still applies today. Content is always king, the main value of any communication and distribution activity.
Content Marketing is therefore strategically essential to be successful. It is a strategy that focuses on the conception, creation and dissemination of informative and high quality contents , so that they reach a well-defined target of users to make known their expertise and any commercial offer.
Already in 2017 , it emerged from theSocial Marketing Industry Reportthat43% of B2B marketersconsidered blogs to be the main type of content to be conveyed as part of a Digital Marketing strategy. In this sense, in2019Hubspot indicated that as many as51% of B2B marketersprioritized the integration of visual resources (images, videos, infographics) within their content marketing strategies. The previous year,B2B Content Marketingmade it clear that as many as72% of marketersbelieved that an effective content strategy was the key to success.
Therefore, relying on content writers, web writers and digital strategists today represents an essential process to best convey one’s knowledge both in terms of language , timing , medium and distribution .
B2B Digital Marketing tools, tactics and digital channels
Now let’s see which additional tools, channels and tactics can prove to be more effective as part of a B2B Digital Marketing strategy , always bearing in mind that there is no one solution that is suitable for all companies and sectors.
Blog and company website
They represent the main assets of a company’s Digital Marketing and are therefore essential to guide the potential customer at any stage of their customer journey .
Both will need to be up-to-date, well-curated, properly designed for mobile devices and capable of fully reflecting the brand’s sentiment.
They must also be fast, include clear calls to action, in-depth links and contact forms, connect correctly to the company’s social channels and, if open to comments, be constantly moderated.
SEO
Search engine optimization allows B2B companies to rank among the top results of Google , Bing and other engines based on specific queries, both with dedicated content and with the entire website.
This positioning is organic, i.e. not resulting from paid activities (such as occurs with Google Ads).
The B2B Digital Marketing strategies are essential to this activity, which serves to respond to a standard behavior of the user on the net: that of querying the search engine before choosing who to interact with.
Marketing and Advertising PPC (Pay Per Click)
These are online activities that involve the creation and dissemination of paid ads , which will appear in response to certain user queries (in the case of the aforementioned Google Ads ), in relation to specific interests (think for example of social media advertising ) or on certain websites or portals.
This Paid Marketing modality falls under the broader umbrella of SEM, i.e. the set of strategies that aim to position content at the top of the SERP with the help of paid tools.
Social Media Marketing
We have already mentioned LinkedIn , which in any case is not the only social platform on which to rely for an effective B2B Digital Marketing strategy.
Whatever networks we choose – Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube – the goal will be to create engagement and brand awareness towards the company, with textual and multimedia contents studied starting from the reference targets and declined with particular tones of voice, frequencies and moods in appropriately planned editorial plans.
Among the most effective content for B2B social strategies are links to blog posts, statistics, invitations to webinars and events (in person or digital), updates on products or services, industry news, case studies and projects, research and white papers, links to product videos or video tutorials, testimonials and technical insights.
