11 steps to create an effective B2B Marketing strategy

11 steps to create an effective B2B Marketing strategy. There is a premise that says “the customer is always right”. This statement implies that their needs must be met at all costs. However, the image of the client has changed in recent years. Not all customers are flesh and blood people, some are companies or entire organizations. They also request the products and services of another organization. That’s why for many businesses today, it can be hard to create marketing strategies for B2B relationships. Here are 11 steps to creating an effective B2B marketing strategy.

What does B2B mean?

The acronym for Business to Business, better known as B2B, defines all those companies engaged in the production and marketing of products or services to meet business needs.

In the beginning, this type of marketing used to have the name of industrial marketing.

However, since the technological evolution and the development of growing software, little by little the term B2B became known.

What is the B2B buying process like?

This process, while similar, is not the same as the buying and selling process between a business and the client. In B2b, there’s a negotiation about the price of the products or services.

This, on its own, also involves other processes. For example, performance evaluation work, price comparisons with other companies, quantitative analysis, and other statistics necessary to finalize purchases.

This market tends to be exposed to the most subjective assessments that the consumer or customer may have. Within the negotiations between the parties, there is the possibility of sharing what the client’s concerns are.

The differences between B2B marketing and B2C marketing

B2B and B2C marketing, or Business to consumer, are very different from each other.

This goes from the way one can apply it, to the way it reaches audiences. Thus, B2B and B2C are opposites.

B2B marketing strategies focus on the interests of people who buy in the name of an organization or for it.

On the other hand, B2C marketing focuses more on the wishes, interests, and challenges of customers. These being the consumer in person.

The 11 steps to creating more effective B2B marketing strategies

You already know the basics of the B2B marketing world. Now we’ll take a look at the steps needed to create an effective B2B marketing strategy for your business.

• Define your buyer persona

It’s been a while since marketing shifted its focus towards customers’ needs and their lifestyles. In the past, it only paid attention to the benefits of the product. Today, in contrast, it allows us to create more successful services according to the buyer’s persona needs.

That’s why getting to know your clients is so important. Only in this way can you fulfill their demands, desires, needs, and wants. The buyer persona is that consumer who meets all the characteristics of your ideal target. To find it, the best thing you can do is hold work sessions together with your sales team. This way you will get statistical data on the customer base.

You can also use tools like Google Analytics. This tool allows you to collect all the information about your visitors from your website. Thanks to it, you will be able to determine the age, gender, place to visit, access method, most visited communication channels, and topics relevant to your business. The objective of this is to create a profile of the ideal person who buys all your products and services.

• Maximize your online presence.

In today’s digital era, most people now prefer to buy their products and services online. So much so, that it makes up over half of the purchasing processes all around the world. On the other hand, many experts predict that in the coming years, this percentage will only increase. That’s why one of the best strategies for your B2B marketing business is to expand your online reach.

If you use social media, create a website, YouTube channel, add a blog to your page or start an email marketing campaign. If you do this successfully, you will have a greater probability of being among the first positions on the search results page.

This offers you many more opportunities to expand your business and position yourself as a brand.

• Content Marketing

The best thing about this type of business is that it has a wide range of fascinating topics. With all of these, you can then adapt to different online platforms and create valuable content for your clients. For example, articles, publications, videos, graphics, infographics, and animations. This way, you will be able to grab the attention of your client or buyer personas.

To create a content marketing campaign, you must first research which platforms to use and create a strategy according to what the users of each channel like best.

Besides, you must know what your target audience is and how it communicates. By doing this, you will be able to communicate more clearly for users who read you. Another important point is to create innovative and valuable content. The contents of this type are ideal for SEO optimization on your website and networks. As a result, this brings greater traffic to your website and your network account.

• Use Intent Popups or Slide-in Opt-ins on Key Pages

There is a lot of debate regarding the use of this tool. However, like it or not, pop-ups work. If you want to use these pop-ups, you must know that many visitors find this annoying. Especially if you don’t do it in a personalized way or if you invade their entire online experience.

The first thing you must understand before implementing these pop-ups effectively is that it’s best to use them to guide your visitor to where they want to go, not to distract them. In this sense, you can use windows like exit-intent popups on your website. But it’s important to remember that exit pop-ups are the BACKUP for your web pages. On the other hand, if your exit-intent popup has a higher conversion rate than your website, you should consider redesigning your website. Why? Because it’s probably not as well-designed for your audience as you thought.

You can also choose to use a slide-in opt-in. Although these aren’t as effective as pop-ups, they are easy to set up and don’t bother your readers. In many websites, they appear once the visitor has read more than half the article or blog.

• Ask Questions to Get a 50% Conversion Rate

Quizzes are one of the strategies that have been generating more leads in recent years. It’s so innovative yet not many use it as a strategy. Because of this, you can be the first to try it and create a much more effective B2B marketing strategy.

Many experts in this environment use it but don’t speak much about it for fear of being copied. Surveys as a form of marketing strategy are very successful in addition to being inexpensive, highly reliable, and much better for your customers. Best of all, your customers or visitors will be able to respond to this survey anonymously, which will give you a much more honest and real answer.

There are several ways to do it, you can use the Google Forms tool, create a plugin on your website or link a small landing page specifically for this survey. Some use email marketing strategies to get the survey directly to each of their users.

Remember what’s important is to carry out an entertaining and easy-to-answer survey. Thus, try to use simple selection questions, as this motivates visitors to answer. This is because of the short time they take and the little need to think about a very long answer.

• Get Reliable Backlinks

Since the beginning of time, “word of mouth” advertising has always been the most effective.

When an organization speaks positively about your products or services, you will immediately be a trusted brand for them.

Besides, they won’t only keep in contact with you and be loyal customers, they will also recommend you to others.

The best way to do this type of advertising is with the use of a Backlink strategy. The backlinks work when you as a company appear on someone’s trusted website.

There are several ways in which you can make these alliances:

• You can blog for other companies.
• Make collaborations with businesses similar to yours.
• Get others to share your content on their pages.
• Join a site’s resource page.
• Provide infographics that other businesses can share.
• Create images that other companies can use.
• Develop highly valuable and interesting content (this is our recommendation since the better the content, the more they want to copy it).

The most important thing is that, whatever you do, don’t buy backlinks. These can severely affect your business if Google detects that you didn’t get these backlinks reliably.

• Be Creative with Cold Emails

Cold emails are those emails that an organization makes after not being answered the first time. These also occur when you have not had a previous relationship with your client or with the company you are going to work with.

To really attract those people who respond to an email you can apply these tips:

• Get creative to stand out from the rest. Try including graphic elements like animated GIFs or memes to get people’s attention.
• Don’t be afraid to be funny! Normal life can be boring. Humor can work wonders.
• Be direct with what you go, don’t use clichéd phrases that can alienate your client.
• If your first email was ignored, send two or three more in the form of follow-ups. This way you won’t go unnoticed.

• Use E-mail Marketing efficiently.

This has a bit to do with the previous point.

Emails are one of the best strategies among B2B companies and one of the cheapest.

11 steps to create an effective B2B Marketing strategy. According to a Salesforce survey, over 70% of companies say that email marketing is vital to their business.

This tool helps them to become known for their products and services, in addition to increasing 70% of their ROI on campaigns.

• Run PPC campaigns

If your presence in social media is at its maximum organically, it’s time to implement paid advertising or PPC Ads.

PPC advertisements mean pay per click and allow you to present your brand’s content to different and new audiences.

If you want to get a better return on your investment, you can follow the following tips:

• Incorporate the data of your buyer persona.
• Increase the content with which each of the audiences you want to reach can be related.

• B2B Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

More than half of the B2B companies implement this type of resource to develop account marketing programs or ABM. This type of marketing strategy is designed to attract and retain large companies. For this, all your departments must join forces to achieve common objectives.

The success of these strategies is based on the combination of inbound marketing and content marketing tactics. The ultimate goal is to get an optimal rating from customers, increase the lead record and traffic on the website.

ABM marketing is very effective since it focuses on meeting each of the customer’s needs, just as Inbound Marketing dictates. Besides, the messages and processes for the buyer can be more direct and clearer.

• Use FOMO to Increase Your Conversion Rate, 11 steps to create an effective B2B Marketing strategy

Using scarcity tactics, better known as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out or the fear of missing something), is one of the few strategies that increase conversion the best.

It’s more common than we think to want to have what we cannot. Because of this, you can use this fact as a strategy to encourage your clients to buy something that maybe later could not be there anymore. It’s important that you apply this strategy well or your clients will then feel little trust towards you.

11 steps to create an effective B2B Marketing strategy, Here are some situations where you can use this tactic:

• When you really have a limited supply.
• If there are only a few spots left for your webinar or event.
• When a product is running low.

BluCactus, your ally in Digital marketing

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BluCactus will accompany you every step that your brand takes. This goes from the creation of the branding of your business to the creation of content. Our focus is on supporting you with the development of your website or the administration of your accounts on social media.

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