Effective marketing is essential for your business. However, you may have trouble getting it right. Between budget limits, creative demands, and channel decisions, a marketer’s job is never done. If your business model is based on B2B sales rather than broad consumer sales, you are likely to focus on inbound marketing. However, you could be selling your business short. Inbound marketing techniques with some effort in consumer branding are also applicable to B2B sales.
Understanding B2B Marketing
B2B marketing is about marketing your products and services to other businesses rather than retail consumers. Usually, B2B marketing is simpler than marketing to consumers or B2C marketing. This is mainly because business purchase decisions are primarily based on bottom-line revenue. Average consumers don’t pay much thought to ROI. However, it is the most significant consideration for business owners.
B2B companies have to cultivate healthy marketing strategies to meet their audience’s needs. They must prove that working with them could be profitable.
On the other hand, integrated marketing is about aligning your marketing techniques to communicate the same core message. It seeks to ensure that all your marketing messages are consistent. Integrated marketing ensures that all your communication tactics take the same direction. For example, you can have the same call to action across all your advertising media.
Integrated B2B marketing is a collaborative marketing technique employed by businesses that market their products and services to other businesses. Effective integrated B2B marketing starts at the business website but doesn’t end there. It seeks to reach leads wherever they are.
Here are a few ways to boost your sales with integrated B2B marketing.
1. Define Your Customers
This is the most important part of the process. All fantastic marketing strategies are founded on the ability to understand your customers and their needs. You can’t give them what they want if you don’t need what it is. When you have a strong sense of who your customers are, it is easy to come up with an integrated marketing message.
Understand everything about the businesses you plan on targeting and the decision-makers of such businesses. Your integrated marketing plan has to be consistent with the values of the companies you hope to target. Any B2B marketing agency hoping to succeed must put itself in the shoes of its potential customers.
There are many ways to learn about these companies. However, the simplest one is checking out data from sources like Hoovers and LinkedIn. Gather enough data to create a strong persona for your B2B marketing plan. The more information you have, the better.
2. Run a Competitive Analysis
Check out the market and find out what others are doing to appeal to their target audiences. Competitive analysis will help you create a strategy that stands out. You can use it to multiply your results and ROI for; email marketing, social media marketing, public relations, and more. You are doomed to fail if you cannot keep up with the competition. Here are a few things to consider when checking out the competitors:
- The sale tactics and results used by competitors
- Their product offerings
- Competitors’ social media presence and marketing content
Understanding the above items will help you determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of competitors. It could improve the strength of your integrated marketing strategies.
3. Understand the Context
B2B marketers must understand the context of buyers. When you know how your products fit into their buying journey, you are likely to develop an integrated marketing message that addresses their needs.
Produce content that appeals to your target audience and offers value. Know everything your customers want and give it to them. Asking questions is always a good idea:
- What are their pain points?
- Why would they buy your products?
- What is the journey like?
- How can your company help?
When you know why your customers are unhappy, you can offer solutions to make them happy. The more context you have, the better. Once you have your target audience on board, continue offering content that proves they made the right decision. Effective B2B content is about what appeals to your target audience inside and outside work.
4. Explore Marketing Channels
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Think of the different channels your competitors use and start taking advantage of them. You may have to experiment with various channels before determining the best ones for your needs.
B2B email marketing is one of your top options. It can help you target both business and individual customers. It promotes engagement which is fantastic for turning subscribers into leads.
B2C customers are likely to respond to entertainment and emotions. However, B2B customers are more focused on ROI and logic. If your business can resonate with whatever is important to them, they will work with you.
Email marketing is powerful for sharing your content as well. 81 percent of B2B marketers consider email newsletters their most frequently used type of content marketing.
5. Generate Trust With Your Online Presence
Even when your prospects are interested in your business and what it has to offer, they may be skeptical of your marketing message. They are unlikely to believe you if you speak to them directly.
The best way to build credibility is by creating a trustable online presence. Your social media presence needs to represent you. When trying to pass your message to B2B buyers, you must find them where they are. Note that different social media platforms are appropriate for different people. What you say needs to be accurate and important to them.
Watch out for the following weak points and fix them to attract B2B buyers:
- poor design
- low-quality or inaccurate content
- unclear calls to action
- difficult navigation
In addition to consistency on your social media platforms, you must also be consistent on email, direct mail, and other channels.
Conclusion
B2B sales have changed significantly in the recent past. In the past, sales processes were predictable, simple, and heavily dependent on the actions of salespersons. Today, sales are sophisticated and reliant on processes rather than individuals.
With the complexities of integrated B2B marketing, you must put in extra effort to boost your sales. Unlike with B2C marketing, you should focus more on ROI and logic than emotions and entertainment. Your prospects need assurance that doing business with you is a profitable idea.