Reach Your Goals: Designing Your B2B Marketing Strategy

Every business needs a marketing strategy that reached out to their target audiences. Technologh has dramatically changed how we act, shop, learn and digest information. When is comes to B2B marketing many business owners have yet to adopt a unique digital B2B marketing strategy.

What does it take to stand out from your competitors? How can you communicate with your loyal customers and reach out to potential customers? With this guide you should be able to identify unique online marketing opportunities for your business and use the below steps to plan and execute a marketing strategy that allows you to communicate your core business messages. Use the following steps to define your B2B marketing objectives.

STEP 1. DESIGN YOUR B2B MARKETING PLAN

Creating a plan is one way to ensure that you stay on the right track. Now is the time to gather as much information as you can about your target audience. You will want to determine who they are, where they are and what they are interested in.

Build your Buyer Personas

Firstly, create your buyer personas. This is the research phase of your strategy. Here you want to get to know your target audience, narrow down their demographics and create a picture of the ideal audience for your products or services.

Create a User Journey Map

Secondly, map the user journey. Mapping the user journey will allow you to assess all of the touch points between the client and your product or service. It usually details the channels that the user will use to search for products and pinpoint the action points on that journey. This should help you to align your business goals with the objectives of your potential clients. Using various scenarios we can define the expectations of a user. After this we create a list of touchpoints, note the user intentions when making decisions and sketch out the journey from start to finish.

Remember that the buyers journey varies because you are targetting a B2B audience. A B2B decision maker is still a person with a buyer persona so aim to attract that decision maker.

Define Task Management

Every plan has a detailed list of tasks attached to it that need to be completed. In this phase of planning you want to narrow down the marketing activities that you want to focus on, the implementation of these activities and understand how each activity will be delivered. Who will be completing these tasks? What tools do they need? Have they got the relevant training to action the various items listed? These are just some of the questions that need to be answered to at this stage.

Design a realistic timeline

Start from the date that you plan to finish drafting your B2B marketing strategy. From here note all of the crucial dates for campaign activities (website launch/landing page launch, Social calendar dates, PR, partnership liaison etc). Now you have a detailed timeframe of what activity should take place and when.

STEP 2. DEVELOP YOUR B2B MARKETING CHANNELS

Now it is time to assess what marketing channels you are using. To ensure that you are utilising your time effectively you need to ensure that your key channels are working for you or will work for you in the future. B2B marketing channels to consider include: Website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Forums, Webinars, Slideshare, YouTube and other niche online platforms.

WEBSITE

Channel number 1 is always your website when it comes to digital marketing. This channel mightn’t drive the most engagement or likes or feedback for your product or service but it should be the channel that you direct people to for information at all times. Increase your website traffic from relevant source marketing and you are on the road to B2B marketing success.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation will help you to position your products and services at the top of the search rankings. Creating original content related to your industry using keyword analysis will help you to excel using this channel. We will help you to get more back links to your site and create relevant content use best practice SEO techniques.

PPC

Pay per click is a popular form of online advertising that allows B2B marketers target their preferred markets online. Bid on your keywords to appear above the organic search results. You only pay when a user clicks on your ad to visit your website. Although effective, this channel can be expensive if you don’t know what you are doing.

EMAIL

This is one of the most effective ways to maintain and build relationships with customers for both B2C and B2B companies. Remember to provide valuable information and help your users to solve problems using tips, tricks, guides and more to encourage engagement with your email content.

CONTENT

Incorporating cleverly written and creatively designed content into all of your marketing efforts is worthwhile today. Content specific channels for B2B include branded podcasts, Videos, Blogs and Webinars. We are content gurus and we are here to help you with all of your content requirements.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Building a list of followers on relevant social media channels is a primary way to stay in touch with potential customers and provide them with information on business updates, product news and service features. With all social media, it is important to maintain a consistent message. Don’t feel obliged to have a presence on every single platform, instead pick out the ones where you know you can reach out to your clients. LinkedIn is one of the most popular B2B marketing channels.

STEP 3. DEsign RELEVANT B2B CONTENT

Remember that as a B2B business you don’t have to be everywhere, using every channel, writing about every subject to get noticed. Be smart in how you use your time to invest in the right content that will be useful to your end reader. The types of content that you wish to consider, the formats of that content and the design requirements need to be clearly identified from the outset. Content to consider includes: Articles, blog posts, emails, white papers, case studies, eBooks, infographics, podcasts and videos.

STEP 4. DISTRIBUTE YOUR B2B STRATEGY TO YOUR TEAM

For the delivery of your strategy you need to consider your internal communications. How do you currently reach out to staff? How can you ensure that all staff read the strategy and provide the necessary feedback? Designing engaging, motivating content to go alongside your plan will help them to understand your goals and objectives.

10 Tips to Follow when Creating your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Get to know your target audience
2. Your website is a crucial tool
3. Use social media to get more engagement
4. Learn the basics of SEO
5. Adopt clever advertising activities
6. Leverage relationships effectively
7. Test and Optimise all of your campaigns
8. Personalise your content
9. Use the data you have and the data of others to learn about your target market
10. Avail of new learning opportunities