Marketing has changed so much in the past few years that watching an episode of Mad Men is like peeking into an ever more distant past, and the fact of the matter is that we’ll never go back to those days. The digital world is pushing business to business marketing trends forward into newfangled terrains, and without staying on top of the latest tactics then your business will fade away faster than Jon Hamm’s career post-Donald Draper (I personally love the guy, but I have a feeling the zenith of his career has already come and gone). So let’s take a look at some business to business marketing tips that will keep you on the top of your game.
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
When was the last time you purchased something without researching it first? Research shows that 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally, and 57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier. That means that more than half of the people looking for a business solution such as yours have already done some sort of research prior to actually contacting a business. So how do you make sure potential customers conducting research choose your solution? Use search engine optimization techniques to make sure you’re the first business they see when they’re trying to gather information. This can be done with tools such as Moz by looking at keywords with high-volume traffic that are applicable to your business and using those insights to create optimized content for the specific terms you’d like to rank for. You can also use Google Analytics to look at the most common search queries that lead visitors to your site, and use this information to develop future content around what’s working best.
A/B Testing
Along with optimizing your content for search engines, you should also optimize your content to provide the highest conversion rates possible. This means constantly testing different copywriting, landing pages, imagery, calls-to-action, the list is endless. If you notice one of your Google AdWords ads has a high click-through rate, but a low conversion rate, you know that something on the landing page is detracting people from following through with your offer. On the flip side, if you notice that your ad has a high number of impressions but a low number of clicks, you can conclude that something in the ad itself isn’t attracting visitors as much as it should be. Try different wording or maybe a different call-to-action, but whenever you perform A/B testing, only change one variable at a time. That way you can determine which element is helping to improve or decrease conversions. If you change everything at once, you’ll have no idea what was working and what wasn’t.
Social Listening
In order to be effective with social media, there needs to be a two-way street. That means you can’t simply use social media as an amplification tool for your own content, you need to be having conversations with your followers to better understand their problems or concerns. If another business tweets at you, don’t let it go unanswered (especially if it’s a complaint). Have one-to-one conversations with your followers who reach out to you so that you really engage with your audience, and don’t be afraid to reach out to them as well. Be proactive rather than reactive.
Develop Partnerships
Sharing your own content is great and all, but developing industry partnerships can help your content reach audiences who may not have known about your solution. This isn’t about creating partnerships with direct competitors but instead establishing alliances with non-competitors within your industry. Maybe there’s a thought leader who runs a popular blog, getting them to share your content with your audience is a great way to expand your reach. But just with social listening, this is a two-way street. If you’ve got other people sharing your content, make sure to return the favor and share some of their content with your own network.
Align with Sales
Just as Frank Sinatra would say that you can’t have love without marriage, nowadays it would seem ludicrous to consider having marketing without sales. The days of siloed departments are behind us and in order to truly succeed in either marketing or sales, they need to be on the same page. Marketing tactics can provide very useful information to help enhance selling: say you publish email newsletters and you notice the same contact consistently opening articles based around the same topic. You can use this information to approach the contact with more targeted content, or even use it as a conversation starter towards booking a meeting: “Hey NAME, I noticed that you’re interested in TOPIC, and I thought I would provide you with some additional content to help guide you on your journey (include link to additional content). Would you have some time to chat about how our business can help with your current issues?” See what I’m getting at? It’s all about using insight and analytics to produce more efficient results.
I hope these tips are helpful in getting started with business to business marketing. To learn about some helpful B2B marketing tools, check out our blog with thoughts from various leaders in the industry (see what I did there?).
