8 B2B Marketing Strategies That You Should Definitely Apply In 2022 [With Examples]
Dominic Tarn
Head of Content
20.03.2022
A position of a b2b marketer means following trends, testing hypotheses, always being one step ahead of the competition, and using advanced marketing tools. The most important task, though, is continuously working on highly competitive b2b marketing strategies.
Marketing strategies for the business-to-business market is about applying a unique set of methods and tools which leads to increased sales and total profit. But how do you define the approaches which will work for any concrete business case?
Well, we’ll find the answer together by learning about b2b in detail, namely:
What is b2b marketing on the whole and how does it differ from b2c?
A typical b2b sales funnel scheme that you should follow when generating b2b marketing strategies.в
B2b marketing examples that have proved their effectiveness.
The major mistakes that marketers make when implementing the b2b plan.
Let’s jump on the topic right now.
What Is B2B Marketing? The Differences Between B2B And B2C
In its essence, b2b marketing covers the methods and practices that one business applies to sell its products to other businesses. This means that b2b marketing strategies are focused on building relationships with other businesses so that its customers are business entities.
On the contrary, the b2c organization is aimed at the production of goods or providing services directly to the final consumers. Thus, b2c companies’ clients are individual people. Consequently, b2c marketing is based on completely different principles and approaches.=
These differences imply some significant b2b features, such as:
Since the cooperation with a b2b company assumes the involvement of several high-level decision-makers, a project marketer should consider the interests of several target groups and prepare different b2b direct mail marketing strategies for each client.
The price of the deal is higher as the sales proposal is directed to companies, not to individuals.
The b2b sales funnel is longer. It takes time to lead a potential client through the warming stages up to negotiations and approval.
This is what the typical b2b sales funnel looks like (keep it in mind when forming your b2b marketing strategies to ensure that you catch a client at the right time, at the right place):
Problem indication
Some business problems (e.g. low productivity, a lot of manual work, etc.) can exist for years, and your task is to indicate those “pain points” via competent and nonaggressive awareness methods.
The b2b marketing examples for this stage are blog posts, cold emails, social media, webinars, search results, and so on.
Search for a solution
The company understands that it’s time to solve the problem, and it starts to seek contractors (on Linkedin, Google, business platforms, or asking for recommendations).
At this stage, you need to demonstrate your company/service/project as a solution in all its glory to grab the interest of the client via catchy b2b advertising, b2b email marketing campaigns, video overviews, impressive presentations and brochures, and other promotional materials.
Decision-making process
Always remember that you’re not the only candidate who applied for cooperation. To be chosen in the final round, you should offer something unique that distinguishes you from the competition and proves that you possess the expertise and skills required to fulfill the project at the highest level.
Such convincing b2b marketing examples as customer testimonials, white papers, case studies, and free trials will work in your favor.
Conversion
In case of successful negotiations, you get a client, which means that the applied marketing solutions have worked. However, don’t rush to breathe with relief once the contract is signed. You approached the most responsible stage – project implementation. So do your best to meet client expectations and try to retain him/her for future orders.
Loyalty
Make the client eager to refer to you with the next project requests and advocate your company again and again.
For this, use motivational promotions, helpful blog posts and tutorials, and exclusive cooperation terms for regular customers. Also consider implementing a quality sales incentive software to improve your client retention strategies and encourage ongoing partnerships.
Such a complex sales cycle shows that b2b marketing is a fast-changing and intellectually sophisticated area. Although, you’re still able to work in the b2b sector with pleasure, getting great results and incomes. The only thing you need to do to succeed is to compose the right b2b marketing strategies for every stage of the customer journey.
Luckily, there are some universal channels and methods that will work great in any case.
The Most Universal B2B Marketing Strategies
On your way to choosing and implementing b2b marketing strategies, you have to do some significant preparatory work. It includes the following steps:
1. Market research
What is the point?
Gives an objective basis for marketing by showing the actual customer needs that should be measured first off;
Provides an understanding of how processes are organized within your company and what workflows should be optimized to work more effectively.
Investigates the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, which helps form a unique commercial proposal.
Helps to define the most efficient promotional channels.
In continuation of the market research, at this stage, you conduct a deep SWOT analysis. This approach will reveal market gaps that your brand can fill with its offer and values.
3. Marketing budget
It’s necessary to have one common budget that will be distributed to specific marketing channels and goals. It’s recommended to allocate at least 10% of the company’s annual revenue for marketing tasks.
4. Setting goals with time frames
Start with quarterly goals, being guided by the OKR goal-setting system so that your goals are achievable and relevant at a concrete stage of the company’s development.
Use these analytics tools to define your current marketing state:
Google Analytics – to analyze traffic and other metrics on your site;
MOZ – for analyzing SEO performance;
Hootsuite – to measure the effectiveness of social networks.
Don’t neglect the opportunity to hire a digital marketing agency to get qualified marketing support in case you don’t know where to start and how it generally works.
According to statistics, only 37% of b2b marketers use an internal marketing department to implement b2b advertising, b2b email marketing, and other b2b marketing strategies. The remaining 63% work with specialized agencies.
Why so:
mostly, only certified experts work in outsourcing marketing agencies;
they use advanced advertising tools and know how to do relevant and scalable market research;
they have rich experience and have successfully completed projects within various fields. The years of practice will be applied to reach great results for you, too.
By signing an agreement with external executors, you pick up long-term, mutually beneficial cooperation, which allows you to concentrate on more important, strategic tasks.
What B2B Marketing Strategy To Choose?
It’s crucial to use profitable marketing strategies for the business-to-business market to remain competitive in the B2B field. Part of this competitiveness comes from truly knowing your business.
How many strategies should you include? Which of them is the most effective?
We suggest mixing and experimenting. And these are our must-have solutions that you should definitely apply in 2022 and the years to come:
1. SEO in conjunction with content marketing
SEO isn’t dead, it’s a fact. Almost 90% of b2b representatives do the organic search through Google to find contractors for their projects. 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO brings more customers than any other type of b2b advertising.
By doing SEO, including keyword selection, on-page optimization, link building with grey hat SEO hacks, and mobile-first indexing, you have an excellent chance to be noticed by the incredibly wide range of Google users with minimum financial investments.
Add SEO power to your content – create unique SEO texts, graphics, and videos and actively distribute them. The content becomes outdated slowly and works longer for your reputation in comparison with direct advertising.
2. Social networks
The oft-expressed view that social networks are for b2c only is unforgivably outdated. Look at LinkedIn. Company pages work here as prestigious business cards with the possibility to display vacancies, the latest updates, and blog posts. A lot of C-level executives prefer Twitter. Why not target them?
Here is one of the b2b marketing examples that deserve your attention. Amazon impresses the audience with nontrivial customer feedback:
One effective way to boost your B2B marketing efforts is by expanding your reach on social media platforms. For example, deciding to buy Instagram followers can quickly enhance your brand’s credibility and visibility. This strategy can help you connect with a larger audience and drive more engagement, ultimately contributing to your overall marketing goals.
3. Influencer marketing
Opinion leaders, represented by bloggers and niche leaders, nowadays have a powerful voice in favor of brands. It will be beneficial for you to make some reputable influencers loyal to your company; thus, they can recommend you to an extremely large audience. Additionally, incorporating event marketing strategies can further amplify your brand’s reach by engaging directly with target audiences in immersive experiences.
Think about what you have in common and how you can be useful to each other. For example, if you’re a software development firm, you can suggest the free development of some helpful app in exchange for advertising. Believe me, the payoff for such an investment of your time and resources will not keep you waiting.
By the way, influencers aren’t just individuals but entire business entities, startups, event groups, etc.
That’s how Tyler Garcia Posey, a famous American actor, advertised H&M: Tyler Posey H&M Christmas Ad.
The same as SEO, do you think email marketing is dead? No. It just has changed. Keep in mind the fact that company employees spend 13 hours in their mailboxes. Can you ignore this factor? A few years ago, $1 spent on newsletters generated almost $40.
Today successful marketing email campaigns look like personal letters and have these important features:
come less often;
don’t sell upfront;
are aimed at making the reader accustomed to the sender and gaining confidence.
Don’t know what types of letters to include in your b2b email marketing strategy? Think about sending promotions, discounts, life stories of your customers or company founders, company updates and news, and educational blog posts.
To place paid advertising, you are provided with numerous platforms:
Social networks (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, etc.);
Sponsored publications in related niche blogs;
Contextual advertising in SERP (Google, Bing, Yahoo);
Retargeting. These are ad blocks that are formed on the basis of cookies and catch up with users with relevant advertisements based on their actions on your website. The conversion rate of retargeting can reach 70%.
The good idea is to start by looking at Native advertising, which appears less annoying and obvious.
6. Chatbots
Chatbots are virtual assistants which perform the role of a company manager. By adding the chatbot to your website or Facebook page, you will collect valuable data about your customers for future sales and increase the conversion rate by 3 times. 85% of all customer interactions are handled without a human agent.
Luckily, you don’t need to be a technician to develop your own chatbot. You can easily implement it with no code and technical skills using such tools as ManyChat, AirChat, or ChatFuel. To get more ideas for chatbot conversational flows, you can use the ready-made templates from Botmakers.net designed for various industries.
7. Account-based marketing
This approach implies adapting your strategy and sales mechanics to the particularities of the accounts you are interested in (your ideal customers). Today, it’s not the number of subscribers that matters but their quality. It’s necessary to focus on the interests, geography, involvement, and other parameters of the target audience, which can increase sales by an average of 35%.
That’s where you can’t go far without big data. Applying big data in your advertising campaign means constantly collecting and analyzing information about each user so that you can use it for successful targeting and personalized sales.
According to McKinsey’s report, 75% of what users watched on Netflix, and 35% of what they bought on Amazon, was done thanks to recommendations based on the results of smart algorithms.
Grammarly is obviously using Big Data to make their marketing campaigns more personalized, too.
The Major Mistakes That Marketers Make When Implementing The B2B Plan
Here are some bonus tips which will help you avoid failure with your b2b marketing strategies.
Don’t:
Ignore the audience. By defining your audience incorrectly or ignoring its diversity, you can generate irrelevant content or spend money on attracting the wrong traffic.
Neglect the necessity of a mobile-first strategy. Mobile traffic prevails today, so the mobile-first strategy is a “must-have” component, especially for b2b eCommerces.
Lack of communication between the marketing and sales departments. Marketers can spend a lot of effort and money on lead generation while sales managers process the client’s request incompetently.
The dominance of tactics over strategy. Chaotic actions toward increasing sales only impede the implementation of the strategy. All marketing activities must be structured, and consistent, and pursue the overall goals of the company.
We’re Here To Help You!
What do you do if you’re afraid of wasting money on implementing ineffective b2b marketing strategies by yourself? The ReVerb team will gladly support you by forming an actionable plan based on your business specifics, goals, and requirements.
Contact us now to find details on how we collaborate with companies and the results you can achieve by working with us. We are here to make your b2b marketing strategies even more effective and profitable.
