What is one B2B marketing strategy that has actually worked for your business?
To help you invest your resources into the right B2B marketing strategies, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their insights. From leaning into inbound marketing to establishing your target audience, there are several strategies you can use for a B2B marketing approach that actually works.
Here are 13 tactics to strengthen your B2B marketing strategy:
- Learn to Say No
- Lean Into Inbound Marketing
- Utilize Video Testimonials
- Focus on Persona Pain Points
- Freshen Up and Refine the Marketing Plan
- Establish Your Target Audience
- Utilize Referral Marketing
- Focus on Off-Site SEO
- Consider Content Marketing
- Be a Thought Leader
- Live Chat for More Sales and Happier Customers
- Prioritize Transparency
- Attend Zoom Networking Events
Lean Into Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is by far the most effective B2B marketing strategy since it thrives on the company’s assets to attract, engage, and delight customers in contrast to standard marketing strategies. Inbound marketers earn their customers’ attention and draw them to a company’s website by creating and distributing helpful content. This strategy also invites visitors in rather than disturbing them with disruptive traditional advertising since messaging is relevant and appears in the right place at the right time.
Eric Blumenthal, The Print Authority
Establish Your Target Audience
For us at Curricula, the answer lies within understanding our target audience and why they need our products and services. Once you know these things, you will have an idea of which platform will work well for them. This means knowing where they hang out online and their interests. Then comes the next step – identifying if there is any gap between your offering and theirs. If so, fill that gap with value-added content.
Nick Santora, Curricula
Focus on Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO refers to search engine optimization tactics that occur off your website. These tactics are commonly seen in the form of backlinks on guest posts and publications. The purpose of off-site SEO is to increase the authority of your website on your business’s area of expertise. As more relevant websites link to your business, search engines will begin to view your site as authoritative. This leads to a higher search ranking placement which is proven to increase website traffic.
Adrian James, Markitors
Utilize Video Testimonials
One of the most powerful tools of persuasion is social proof. So a great strategy is to develop a plan to get your customers to tout your organization’s benefits for you. Third-party testimonials substantiate your product’s claims in a more credible way than you can yourself.
Use video to take your testimonials to the next level. These can then be shared on your website, in social media, email blasts, and even included in proposals. The bonus is you can always utilize the transcript if you need a text version of the testimonial.
Eric Rutin, Marketing Mentor
Focus on Persona Pain Points
There is often a disconnect between our perception of the clients and what they think. Being humble and asking them what their challenges are helps to improve the products or services offered. It often brings new clients for whom short advice can be the start to long-term cooperation.
Rebeca Sena, GetSpace.digital
Learn to Say No
One of the most critical and effective strategies we’ve taken with our branding agency to cut through the noise in B2B marketing is to say ‘no.’ That might sound counterintuitive but let me explain:
As we’ve gotten more and more specific about what we do, who we do it for, and where our unique expertise and experience lie, we’ve had to say ‘no’ a lot more often. ‘No’ to clients who aren’t in our industries of expertise. ‘No’ to projects that are not in our services niche. ‘No’ to businesses that don’t match our team and our unique way of getting the results for our clients.
While saying ‘no’ can seem hard in the moment — like we’re passing up clients — what we’re really doing is saying ‘yes’ to the best projects, the best fits with clients, and the best work that we can do. And it’s paid tremendous dividends in our marketing, our client relationships, and our bottom line.
I’d recommend to any business leader to consider how you can start saying ‘no.’
Mike Jones, Resound
Freshen Up and Refine the Marketing Plan
The business plan I had prepared during the inception of my business obviously included a marketing plan. Fortunately, this plan incorporated a top-notch social media strategy. The top social channels, Twitter and Facebook, allow my customers to establish a stable connection with me. However, the problem is that what works online is a moving target.
Fine-tuning the business plan is necessary because today’s social media might become tomorrow’s MySpace. Therefore, you must know where to focus your time as it depends on the area where your customers are hanging out. For example, if your B2B clients are avid Pinterest users (e.g., architects/interior designers), it’s crucial to refine your marketing plan to take advantage of this platform.
Keeping all the above in mind, we update our B2B as well as B2C marketing strategy yearly and it helps us a lot.
Caroline Lee, CocoSign
Utilize Referral Marketing
Using referral marketing can help grow your business, especially if you have a large dedicated customer base. When customers are happy, they will likely tell their friends and colleagues about their experience. Referrals reportedly make up 50% of all purchasing decisions. Plus, these kinds of customers spend twice as much as sales garnered through paid advertising. Customers gained through referrals are more loyal, too.
Benjamin Smith, Disco
Consider Content Marketing
One B2B marketing strategy we use has been content marketing in a variety of topics related to our core business. We put out articles and interviews to spread awareness around our brand. We then target those readers to try to upsell them on our services while building our brand.
Darren Litt, MarketerHire
Be a Thought Leader
If you want to be successful in the B2B space, you should be promoting yourself, your business, or both as a thought leader in your industry. Provide free content that is highly relevant and valuable to your target audience. This will establish your level of credibility and expertise, which will go a long way in gaining your target customers’ trust and, hopefully, their business.
An easy way to get started is to set up some Google Alerts about your industry. You will get summaries of top stories, which you can use as springboards to start creating content about trending topics. It will show your audience that you have your finger on the pulse of what’s important to them and your industry.
Courtney Buhler, Sugarlash PRO
Live Chat for More Sales and Happier Customers
Live chat is an extremely effective means of providing customer service. The vast majority of customers say that they are satisfied with the live chat customer service experiences they’ve had.
This makes sense when considering that customers who use live chat are much more likely to complete a purchase than those who don’t. It’s also the fastest means of communication in many ways, and most customers are more comfortable using live chat over emailing or calling to receive support.
Sara Shah, Journ
Get Clear on How You Present Your Brand
We market ourselves the same way we would use digital marketing to help our clients. Our website is fun and colorful, and our copy is simple, relaxed, and entertaining. By revealing such a genuine brand personality, we’re able to attract clients who are truly the right fit to work with us.
This helps our businesses because it eliminates any confusion as to what we offer and how we offer it. As long as we stay transparent in how we present ourselves online, we can gain a loyal client base.
Kristen Dole, Nowadays
Attend Zoom Networking Events
Finding and meeting like-minded business owners, authors, writers, animators, podcasters, and other creatives who need voiceover services can be challenging. So, I like to attend online networking events globally and meet new people in order to expand my network and sphere of influence.
When we meet each other at events, we are both interested in (no matter what the subject matter). It’s a good springboard to create relationships that ultimately lead to business. And for voiceover, business can come from anywhere!
Melissa Del Toro Schaffner, Melissa Del Toro International
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