B2B customer acquisition can leave many inexperienced marketers scratching their heads. What works for consumer-driven marketing campaigns might not always work in the B2B industry.
That’s why you need tried-and-tested B2B marketing strategies to ensure you’re on the right track. With all of the competition to stay aware of, you need effective digital strategies and technologies to get the attention of your target audience.
B2B marketing funnels are also distinctly different from their B2C counterparts. The buying cycles are different, different types of people making the buying decisions and distribution channels.
According to a recent Deloitte Study, B2C companies spend more on social media, whereas B2B companies spend more on analytics and training.
In this post we’re going to share some tried and tested B2B marketing tips to help you get your desired customers.
1. Pinpoint Your Target Audience
Approach B2B marketing as a clinical exercise. You need to know exactly who’ll be marketing to, so you need to have a clear target audience in mind.
Forget about marketing to a broad audience in the hopes someone will like what your company has to offer and take the offer. Pinpoint target audiences will help you define marketing campaigns and other important decisions later.
Concentrating your lead generation efforts on a specific target audience will give you a head start, and allow you to evolve and iterate your marketing tactics according to how the audience responds. This will also greatly help you find B2B prospects, as you’ll know exactly what type of businesses you should be approaching.
A broad audience will require you to execute many campaigns simultaneously, and the data you get from these efforts will be too much to handle.
The goal of B2B marketers is to generate leads for the company. Perception, image and value goes out of the window if your company doesn’t have any clients to service.
2. Inbound Marketing
Once you have the target audience figured out, inbound marketing efforts become less complex. Inbound digital marketing efforts mostly revolve around content and getting your website visibility on search engines.
Inbound customers are usually high-intent, provided you’re serving them content that’s designed to convert visitors into paying customers. A targeted content strategy that works from top to bottom of the funnel is therefore essential.
You need to know what your target audience is searching for in order to create the right content. We’ve seen many B2B companies trying to create content that serves a broad audience, which is fine if you want traffic. But if you want targeted traffic that generates leads, creating the right content is essential.
When you write content that’s helpful to your targeted audience, your business appears as an authority, thus generating trust before you even directly with the customer.
Content shouldn’t be limited to blog posts either. Video content is a great and engaging way of reaching out to potential customers and getting your message across.
3. Channel Partners
Getting in touch with channel partners who deal with the same customers as you do can be a great strategy. You might have services to offer that can help another company offer better packages to their customers.
In your B2B customer acquisition efforts, search for businesses like these and reach out to them, explaining how you’re in a position to provide additional value to their customers.
4. Referral Marketing
Do you know who the strongest advocates for your business are? The answer of course is, satisfied customers.
Satisfied customers already know the value you’re delivering with your products and services, and you can simply incentivize them to spread the word around. It can be as simple as offering a small discount if your customer successfully refers another customer to your business.
Happy customers are very likely to talk about your product or services, and a bit of incentive can push them to do it more diligently.
This is one of the most cost-effective ways of getting more customers for your business. In fact, you’re actually getting more value from your past marketing efforts by using the existing customer base for this type of marketing campaign.
5. Facebook and LinkedIn
Facebook is still the largest social media networking site on the planet, so don’t brush it off as just a social network for old people.
Simply use it to generate cost-effective and highly targeted traffic to your website, and you’ll have a steady stream of new leads.
LinkedIn is also worthy of note because it’s probably the best social platform geared towards B2B companies. It’s a platform for professionals, and you can connect with customers or channel partners easily here. Reach out to potential customers or referral partners and try to develop an authentic relationship with them.
Share original content on your LinkedIn profile and you’ll have a decent inbound traffic source here as well. Hopefully these tips spur you on to greater results in your B2B customer acquisition work.
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