There are a multitude of digital marketing tactics available to B2B marketers today. Fundamentally, you must include the right elements in your strategy to suit your organisation’s goals.
But which are essential for success?
We speak with multinational B2B firms daily, and here are the five digital marketing elements that most swear by for success:
#1 - The Low Hanging Fruit:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) / Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEO is widely considered a staple by many marketers.
57% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates more leads than any of their marketing initiatives.
The most common, yet easily fixed, mistake is to not invest in SEO and SEM. Why?
Because people that are searching for your product or service are inherently in the second phase of the sales funnel - the purchase intention phase. If your brand/product does not feature when they are actively searching, this is a huge missed opportunity for lead generation.
Implement SEO / SEM in two ways:
- Organically: by Search Engine Optimisation of your digital assets - your website, social media and content marketing strategy (inc backlinks) must incorporate the keywords your audience uses when they have the problem that your brand/product solves.
- Paid: by purchasing industry-related keywords and titles, or using an SEM specialist to boost your brand to the top of search results and achieve higher organic traffic to your website.
#2 - To Directly Support your Sales Function:
Lead Generation Campaigns
Online lead generation campaigns encompass a wide range of tactics and strategies depending on which platform you are leveraging. Their commonality lies in their focus on following the customer journey; measuring along the way to generate an enquiry or lead (eg via an application or enquiry form).
It is essential that you introduce the right metrics to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Hubspot provides a few tips when building lead generation campaigns:
1) Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise
2) Link your call-to-action (CTA) to a dedicated landing page [that can capture a lead]
3) Get your sales team involved, your marketing and sales team need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) to Opportunity before you even begin to capture leads.
We also recommend that when Marketing hands a MQL to the Sales team, they work closely to ensure that lead is nurtured by the Sales team - supporting them to close the deal together.
This helps to ensure leads don’t get dropped from one team to the next.
#3 Don’t Lose a Warm Lead:
Retargeting
Retargeting is an excellent tool to give customers a little nudge who have already been exposed to your brand. Research suggests 70% of marketers use retargeting to increase brand awareness.
To take lead conversion to the next level, retargeting should be included to monitor your customer’s behaviour and by using that information, communicate on more personalised topics to bring them back to your landing page. Leadfeeder suggests some best B2B retargeting practices to adopt:
- Create unique landing pages specific to user experience: an effective landing page should work to encourage a specific CTA to each customer segment.
- Creating supporting B2B sales content: delivering content is a more effective approach for attracting and retaining prospects.
The short-term goal might be to retarget them to to land on your website again, but the long-term goal is to ultimately nurture a meaningful relationship over time that results in a sale.
#4 Demonstrate your Reputation:
Content Marketing
B2B customers are constantly educating themselves with the content being produced by brands. To ensure that your business is demonstrating your expertise by providing helpful and relevant content, here are a few questions to ponder whilst crafting your strategy:
- Which content is relevant for each customer segment?
- What are the problems your customers are trying to solve?
- How does your product help them solve their most critical problem?
- What content types and channels are you going to use?
Additionally, your employee’s can share your company’s content on their own social media accounts.
Everyone Social suggests an employee advocacy program can drive 16% better win rates and deliver 48% larger deals.
Employees also benefit from this in terms of enhancing their personal branding and positioning themselves as industry experts.
#5 Nurture your Existing Audience:
Email Marketing
By 2023, almost half the world’s population will be using email as one of their communication tools. 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are still the best way to nurture leads.
A good starting point would be to build a targeted email list full of qualified leads that are interested in what you have to offer.
If these 5 tactics aren’t already implemented in your plan, nows a good time to start! Invest in the essential B2B digital marketing tactics today to propel your business to greater heights.
This article was written by Carmen Hoy and Priyanka Nadkarni of Window Seat Consulting.