B2B Marketing Strategies – 11 Tips to Grow Your Business

Many business owners spend too much time trying to consider which B2B marketing strategies will drive their sales and expand their business.

With such a hyper-competitive market, creating a successful B2B marketing strategy requires taking advantage of a wide variety of competitive strategies.

Let’s dive in and take a look at the eleven fundamental B2B marketing strategies that will help your business generate leads and get ahead. 

#1 Do Your Research

We’d be lying to you if we told you there was a one-size-fits-all approach to B2B marketing strategies. 

Research is the cornerstone of any type of modern marketing. Whether you’re using ultra-detailed studies or carefully-constructed brand research, the right research methods can help you and your business make more informed decisions. Essentially, proper research will help you objectively craft baselines for your strategies that allow you to measure your results.

Conducting research can also help you get to know your customers better.

After all, your business is there to serve the needs of the customer, right?

Market research is such an important tool, giving you insight into how well your business is performing. With well-conducted market research, you can get to know which elements of your business are performing successfully and which elements you may consider altering to better serve your customer.

There have been many studies on the impact of market research and how important it is for firms to systematically conduct research on their own customers and clients. In fact, these businesses can grow up to ten times faster than those that never conduct market research.

#2 Build a High-Quality Website

In the modern world, your business website is one asset you must prioritize. In the past, many marketers believed websites were simply brochures or digital billboards. 

This couldn’t be further from the truth. A high-quality, successful website is the centerpiece of your business’s online presence; it can deliver a rich fountain of information for current and potential customers and showcase your authority in the marketplace.

Without a proper website, you miss out on a crucial visibility tool. Consumers are constantly searching online to find service providers. If you want a chance to win the business of those consumers, they need to be able to find your website. Beyond that, a website is an exhibit of your expertise in the marketplace. 

According to Transaction, 81% of consumers research service providers online before making a final decision, and important statistic to consider whether you’re a B2B or B2C firm.

You must also consider the design of your website. The graphic design of your website will influence the perceptions of your audience. A well-designed website can make your business feel intuitively distinct. We often underappreciate the power of design. It’s so important to keep in mind how important it can be for setting you apart from the competition and conveying your credibility.

Lastly, you want to make sure that your website is usable no matter what device your audience is using. That includes mobile.

So many people conduct business with mobile devices, which is why having a responsive design can allow you to adapt to your user.

#3 Craft a Consistent Inbound Marketing Plan

One of the best mediums for engaging and converting online leads is inbound marketing. 

You want to find your target audience to find you if they’re seeking out the products or services that you offer, right?

There were many B2B businesses that implemented inbound marketing strategies prior to the pandemic, many of which were minimally affected by the pandemic. Even through the worst times, they continued seeing leads roll in.

#4 User-Generated Content

User-generated content is a B2B marketing element that is here to stay. 

Part of your B2B marketing strategies  should be sharing user-generated content, as it can save you the valuable time of trying to create your own content. Beyond that, it can help you earn potential customer trust by acting as social proof.

When it comes to marketing on social media, it’s important to tag all platforms. When you abide by this best practice and tag the user that created the content, you can increase your brand awareness and reach new audiences. 

What makes user-generated content so crucial, you ask?

It shows how your products or services can be useful in real-world situations. When creating paid campaigns to showcase to new companies, you can use customer testimonials as a main focal point.

#5 Search Engine Optimization

Like we said before, your target audience must be able to find your website for your business to be effective. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the tool for the job.

You might feel like you’re bombarded with the term ‘SEO’ all the time, though it just goes to show how crucial of a piece of the marketing puzzle it is. SEO as a discipline can be quite complex, evolving every single day. But there are two main components you must concern yourself with, including:

• On-Site SEO
• Off-Site SEO

On-site SEO makes use of keyword phrases, which help communicate your business’s content to your target audience. Of course, the keyword phrases you’ll use will focus on your products, services, or expertise.

The main goal of on-site SEO is search engine communication. Essentially, you need to let Google and other search engines know the purpose of your website. This way, when a consumer goes hunting for a product or service online, that search engine can deliver more relevant results. 

On the other hand, you have off-site SEO, which is composed of links that direct consumers to your website. These can be guest posts on other online publications or other forms of outside engagement. The goal here is to make your site the authority in your niche. 

When more relevant or authoritative sites link to your website, it can show search engines that you are a credible source of information. In turn, these search engines will bump you up in the rankings. 

Check out our B2B business development article, where we discuss how to target new clients using search engine optimization.

#6 Content Marketing

In B2B content marketing, you produce and distribute content to increase traffic, brand awareness, leads, and eventually, sales. There are many forms of content marketing to consider, which is why it’s important to choose the type that works best for your business. 

Some of the best examples of content marketing include:

• Blogging
• Email Newsletters
• Podcasting
• Infographics

So why is content marketing such an important tool for B2B companies?

Simply enough, it has an incredible ROI.

Statista data shows that over 30% of marketers consider content marketing to bring in the highest ROI.

With more than 90% of B2B marketing strategies implementing content in some way, it’s easy to see why. 

Many B2B firms use content marketing agencies to help optimize their inbound marketing strategies, which is something you should certainly consider. 

#7 Marketing Automation & CRM

Businesses that use marketing automation can save a significant amount of time and money.

In essence, marketing automation replaces mundane manual processes with automation using unique technological solutions. With marketing automation, you can create, manage, and measure your campaigns or programs from a single, centralized system.

Of course, picking the right software for marketing automation is crucial, as it has to fit the scale and complexity of your business’s needs.

You should also consider using a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM).

Many businesses use this essential digital marketing solution to track or organize client information and opportunities. CRM can keep you organized and in line with the needs of your customers, regardless of how you expand and grow.

CRM can be as complex as you need to be, collecting information regarding specific customer interactions to synchronize efforts across the spectrum of your business. 

#8 A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of taking a piece of content and creating two or more versions of it to send out ot your audience. After you’ve released these pieces of content, you can analyze the data to see which of them performed best or increased your KPIs.

The Surprising Power of Online Experiments from Harvard Business Review is a classic article detailing how Microsoft was able to use A/B testing to create massive gains. 

You can test just about anything with A/B testing. Some common cases for A/B testing include ads and landing page design. A few common A/B testing tools include VWO, Google Optimize, and Optimizely.

#9 PPC Campaigns

PPC campaigns can help B2B companies capture leads at lightning speeds. Essentially, your target audience is saying, “I need your products or services” when they type keywords into Google. It’s up to you to have those keywords and campaigns lined up so customers have something to click through too when they’re on the hunt. 

Targeting your consumers with a combination of paid and organic outreach is crucial. In doing so, you can increase your visibility on social media platforms and search engines. Visitors that enter a website with a pay-per-click are almost twice as likely to make a purchase compared to those who find themselves on a website organically. 

Some of the most common types of PPC campaigns include:

• Dynamic search ads
• Remarketing & Customer Match
• Audience Targeting
• Call Recording
• Bumper Ads

If it seems like a lot to implement on your own, you may consider working with a PPC ads agency.

#10 Social Media

At this point, do we need any more proof that social media isn’t leaving anytime soon?

For professional service firms, this is especially true. 

Modern consumers often make their way to social media when looking for new service providers. The source of information they can find on social media is often more important than recommendations or referrals. 

In the wake of social media, the way that referrals work has greatly evolved as well. That’s not to say referral marketing is dead, as it’s flourishing more than ever (we’ll get to that soon). However, a recent referral marketing study showed that 17% of expertise-based referrals happen through social media interactions.

In essence, social media can be the catalyst for companies looking to expand their reach and showcase their reputation and expertise to new audiences. 

We like to think of social media as a form of social listening, in which you can monitor the way customers feel about your product and connect with them on deeper levels. It’s a networking opportunity that absolutely cannot be understated. 

#11 Referral Marketing

Though the nature of referral marketing has greatly evolved in the wake of social media, it is still a crucial element in your B2B marketing strategy. 

When it comes to professional services, referral marketing is an even more important marketing strategy. 

A recent study showed that more than 81% of providers received referrals from non-clients. 

You might be asking,

Where do these referrals come from?

Most of them are based on the firm’s reputation for their particular sense of authority or expertise. 

When a business uses content marketing as well as the several other important B2B marketing tactics on this list, they can craft a reputation that spreads far and beyond, showing potential clients that they have a specialty in their industry. 

This understanding of expertise can even extend to audiences that have never directly worked with you. With this kind of brand recognition, it becomes that much easier to get referrals, which can lead to sales and new business. 

Final Thoughts

When it comes to B2B marketing, it’s crucial that you never get too comfortable. When businesses get too comfortable with their current forms of marketing, they hit a standstill.

Instead, you need to consistently assess your B2B marketing strategies, looking for unique ways that you can improve and extend your reach. 
The world of digital marketing is evolving at an accelerated rate. B2B firms that are successful are those that gather data on the way they are performing. Come see how working with a B2B lead generation agency can help you build a better business, and get in touch with us today here at Mediaboom to learn more!