B2B Marketing: How To Promote Your Business While Adding Value

What exactly is B2B marketing?

When it comes to B2B, or business to business marketing, it will be a little different from B2C, or business to consumer marketing. Customers in the B2B market are making their decisions based on efficiency and logic as opposed to an actual emotional connection to the brand. This means that the marketing techniques will look slightly different, but not completely off of the marketing strategies that B2C consumers use.

Business to business marketing includes any marketing content or marketing strategy that is aimed at a business or an organization as opposed to the ordinary consumer. A B2B transaction occurs when one company’s products or services are needed for another company to improve its operations and maintain a good ROI. In other words, you are selling something to another business or organization instead of a customer. Good B2B marketing will help make potential buyers more familiar with your brand and its value. Businesses will be purchasing from you on behalf of their organization rather than for themselves like regular everyday consumers. In B2B marketing, the organization is your consumer. Your main goal here is to create value.

Why is B2B marketing vital to success?

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Some Business to Business marketing strategies that help create value.

1. Know your target audience

Millennials should be your target audience as they will represent 75% of the global workforce by 2025. Just like with B2C marketing, B2B marketing will involve a particular audience. Use the LinkedIn website demographics tool to monitor who your traffic is.

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2. Social media

Just like with B2C marketing, social media is a good start for B2B marketing. It remains a great way to connect with potential customers and colleagues to provide updates on the industry and to do research on brands and their products or services. After all, 75% of B2B buyers utilize social media to make a purchase. Sharing relevant content and being easily accessible also helps build trust in the B2B marketing segment. Same as with B2C marketing, using the appropriate hashtags will get more eyes on your content, particularly those who are interested in the topic, and it will show your business expertise too. Business managers will for sure be using social media to take a look at reviews to see whether your company is a good fit or not.

The most popular social media platforms that B2B marketers use are LinkedIn and Facebook, paid and unpaid. For B2B digital marketing, these two platforms are your best friends, as opposed to B2C marketing, where most if not all social media platforms are put into use. Put simply, social media marketing is more limited for B2B but still very important.

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Facebook ads have been a useful tool for many businesses. Here are some good tips to leverage Facebook for B2B marketing:

• Use Facebook ads for B2B (including Brand awareness, lead generation, and conversion)
• Have a complete Facebook business page
• Gather your best reviews
• Always be available on Facebook messenger for contact

Tips for using LinkedIn, one of the best tools for lead generation:

• Make a professional and attractive looking business page and post content regularly
• Make use of long-form posts, a preference when it comes to B2B marketing
• Promote your business with videos as they can give you more credibility and can drive potential consumers to your brand
• Promote your brand with sponsored content, text ads, and sponsored Inmail
• Comment on your audience’s LinkedIn posts to build a relationship and respond to comments

3. Leverage case studies and client testimonials

Everything from reviews, customer testimonials to case studies can gain you and your brand a lot of trust. Businesses will want to hear from other companies themselves about why your brand is one worth doing business with. Potential buyers also just want to know how you’ve performed in the past. Additionally, these tools can help others better understand how other companies have utilized what you offer and to know that you can deliver. Having testimonials on your website and social media platform that have real people talking about why they are satisfied with your business is a great way to gain trust and loyalty and build credibility and help businesses make purchasing decisions.

4. Understand what incentivizes a customer to buy in the first place

Consider these 5 areas of value that influence buying behavior:

•   Response: Knowing that someone understands your problem and wants to help you solve it.
•   Service: The ability to spell out the details while eliminating any perceived risk. This can affect the credibility and reliability of your company depending on how well you adhere to and handle service-related needs.
•   Quality: A consistent method or formula that yields well-made products or services that help the customer achieve their goals and/or solve their problems.
•   Price: A value that’s clear, practical and competitive.
•   Time: The product or service is timely and dependable, has a sensible learning curve, demonstrates clear return on investment in the short term.

 All of these are derived from psychological insights and shopping habits. Any of these areas will add to a business’ success, making potential buyers more interested if they know that you have them.

5. Optimize your website

Having a website is a given for obvious reasons, but it’s important to pay attention to your website’s SEO. B2B customers do a lot of preliminary extensive research before considering potential vendors and ways before making a buying decision. Your website will be the most important tool for building visibility and is often the way potential buyers find you unless you happen to pop up on LinkedIn or Facebook. That being said, making sure your website is optimized for SEO is the best way to ensure that you show up in search results so that people can find your website and put your brand into consideration. Your website will also let you demonstrate your brand’s expertise once you regularly pop up in searches and become a regular in the overall marketplace. Check out this guide to B2B SEO and also make sure your website uses a responsive design and make sure your website’s overall design is appealing and professional looking as it can influence buyers’ perceptions and make your brand more memorable.

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6. Email marketing

Another great way to promote your brand, email marketing helps you communicate with potential buyers directly. It is also a great way to personalize your messages to them and help your leads grow while fostering a relationship. However, your email marketing must focus on what matters most to B2B customers, like money, resources, and time, as opposed to entertaining and emotional content that individual consumers respond to in B2C marketing.

For additional B2B marketing techniques, visit this link.