17 B2B marketing tips that are crucial to achieving marketing success
November 08, 2021
B2B marketing is often perceived and treated differently than B2C. That’s because in B2B we’re marketing to business entities, not to consumers like in B2C. But is this really true?
Fact is, all B2B marketing tips that have been proven to give results, are those centered around humans. Whether you are buying or selling a service or looking for a business to partner up, you need to entice a human who stands behind the company. But, with the major changes in society and economy since the pandemic outbreak, it was inevitable that there would be changes in the B2B world as well.For example, what once took an international flight to close a deal with a new partner, was suddenly surprisingly easy to do virtually on an AI-powered business platform. According to that, staying up to date about the newest B2B marketing tips is imperative for your B2B business to survive.
B2B marketing tips you need to know if you want to succeed in 2022
Apart from the fundamental B2B marketing tips that B2B companies are using to build stronger brand awareness, every year there are new innovative ways to stand out from the competition. Digital trends are following the fast-changing world, hence B2B marketers are always ready to experiment with their strategies and find B2B marketing tips that will work best in the near future.
To take advantage by early adopting the future marketing trends, keep reading the following B2B marketing tips that will bring you the desired results in 2022.
Enhance video marketing
Because of the amount of content posted daily as a part of someone’s digital marketing strategy, the people’s attention notably decreased. Consequently, B2B marketers had to try different solutions to help their message get attention.
One of the B2B marketing tips that proved to be most effective is video content and many experts in the field believe that this trend is here to stay.
Over the past few years, video content was a hot topic when speaking about B2B marketing tips for a reason. Moreover, based on the video marketing statistics, video marketing offers a better ROI and it helps with the lead generation too. Hence, 95% of video marketers plan to increase their spending on video marketing. Using a free online video maker can help you to quickly convert your ideas into video content as it has templates, music, and visual media available in it to enhance your content quality.
User-generated content
Another B2B marketing tip that is here to stay. Sharing user-generated content as part of your B2B marketing strategy will not only save you valuable time creating content, but it’s social proof that will easily help you earn the trust of your potential customers.
Furthermore, since you already know that tagging all accounts involved is one of the best practices, tagging the users who created that content will help you reach a new audience and will increase your brand awareness.
Posting user-generated content will help you to show that your product or service is useful and approved by your customers. You can even use your customer’s testimonials as part of your paid campaigns and entice new companies with those trustworthy recommendations.
Need to generate more leads? Because without a doubt, referral marketing will definitely take a huge impact on businesses approach in 2022. Being on top when it comes to acquiring new leads and cost-effective, with businesses having already far-stretched budgets, I’m sure many will turn to the idea of establishing a referral program.
Shift to omnichannel marketing
With the changing times, a B2B marketing tip that became imperative to know is shifting marketing strategy from multichannel marketing to omnichannel marketing. Omnichannel marketing is when your intended audience is connected with all the channels, be it social media, physical storefronts, mobile marketing, newspapers, and the web.
Fundamental B2B marketing tips to include in your marketing strategy
B2B marketing is still a terribly beautiful territory – you can enjoy the tasty fruits of the angelic trees, without seeing you’re sinking in quicksand. So, to escape and succeed, you need to implement the following B2B marketing tips that are fundamental to the marketing strategy of every successful B2B company.
Use full-funnel marketing
Full-funnel marketing means reaching consumers where they fall within the funnel. It is a necessary approach because it allows marketing efforts to be calculated. Creating a successful full-funnel marketing strategy starts with B2B marketers mapping out the three stages of the funnel and the content assets required for each.
That allows marketers to identify which part of the funnel is leaking and where they might be losing customers, and look for ways to improve and enhance the customer journey. Creating a full-funnel marketing strategy ensures that marketing efforts are calculated, with clear potential results, and keeps efforts focused on outcomes rather than just activities.
Dave Toby, Director of Pathfinder Alliance
Start a referral program
A referral program is a great way to find clients online, thus, it’s one of the best B2B marketing tips that can make a change in your B2B business. Create a referral program that allows other businesses to share your products or services with potential clients, track those referrals, all while incentivizing them to keep referring your company.
When creating a referral program, here are a few things to keep in mind: make the sign-up process simple and hassle-free. If it takes too long for businesses to sign up, they will lose interest. Create a simple way for businesses to sign-up and start sharing.
Nina Jensen, Community Outreach Manager at 8×8
Referral marketing takes a huge impact on a business’s approach for a few years now. Being on top when it comes to acquiring new leads and being cost-effective, with businesses having already far-stretched budgets, I’m sure many will turn to the idea of establishing a referral program.
Joy Corkery, Content Marketing Lead at Latana
Listen more market less
One of the B2B marketing tips that no one mentions is to stop marketing. Seriously. Instead, start listening. Then respond. You can even do this in your blog. Before you research keywords, talk to your customers. Find out what their questions are and then address them, candidly, in your blog posts.
Nicolas Jacobeus, Founder and CEO of SaaSpirin
Invert the marketing funnel
B2B companies should completely invert the marketing funnel and focus on driving action first, as opposed to awareness. How would they accomplish this? Instead of focusing primarily on the features of their product or service, they should focus on crafting a narrative around how their biggest advocates use them!
As we know, reviews and testimonials are gold for businesses and will be for the foreseeable future. Throw in the fact that emotion is often a greater purchase indicator than logic, and you have a recipe for marketing success.
So, to get better marketing results in 2022, B2B companies should flip the marketing funnel on its head and create stories to elicit emotion and action out of their prospects.
Cory Young, Founder of BCC Interactive
Appeal to the human beings
Ariel Lim, Digital Marketing Consultant
One of the B2B marketing tips that creates the biggest opportunities is to describe and position products in a way that appeals to the human beings they’re trying to sell to. A lot of B2B positioning feels like it’s pulling from the investor deck, rather than an insights-driven effort to understand an audience.
If you position yourself as a B2B solution platform that finds synergies to streamline operational efficiency, there’s a pretty good chance your audience can’t tell what you really do, what sets you apart, or why they should work with you. If you develop messaging that’s distinct, specific, and benefit-oriented, you’re much more likely to connect with your buyers.
Elliott Brown, Director of Marketing at OnPay Payroll and HR
We find that the best way to market B2B business is to create personal relationships with customers and use storytelling as much as possible.
Be personal. Connect with real people through social media platforms. People respond to sincere, non-automated, non-sales-pitchy messages. Get interested in their companies and the work they do. Exchange ideas and information.
Creating meaningful, personable, mutually-beneficial relationships can help build a great business environment. Then, use customer success stories to tell your own story and how you help other businesses. After all, that’s the real essence of a successful B2B enterprise.
Natalya, Content Marketer for LiveHelpNow
Bifurcate your marketing funnel
Most B2B marketing teams make the flawed assumption that all marketing qualified leads are the same and convert through the funnel at the same rate. This assumption breeds marketing struggles. The funnel needs to be divided into the following parts:
- High Intent: These are leads that have completed website demo requests, pricing requests, talked to sales, submitted contact forms, etc.
- Low Intent: These are led like webinar attendees, ebook downloaders, paid social traffic, direct response, etc.*
Once you see the data, you’ll realize that high intent matters most and you can shift your efforts to influence those conversions with greater focus.
Vivek Nanda, VP of Marketing at Jorsek Inc., makers of easyDITA
Pre-validate marketing campaigns
One way B2B companies can improve their marketing is by pre-validating their marketing campaigns for optimal results. For each campaign, publish 3 versions of your content at 25% of the campaign duration using 25% of the budget. Then, use the remaining 75% of the budget on the version of the campaign that performed the best during the trial period.
Nick Swekosky, CEO of Market Metrics
Add your phone number
Add a Whatsapp number and a phone number to your landing pages, social media creatives, ads, and your business website. Many B2B companies just have a contact form or email id. But a lot of clients want to connect immediately. Responding instantly gives you a big advantage over competitors who might respond in 8-24 hours.
We’ve been able to get the information required to make a quote much faster (usually within 2 hours) and in most cases, send a proposal the same day. When you respond instantly, the client is less likely to contact your competitors.
This has made our marketing much more effective and increased our conversion rate 3x times.
Nikita Agarwal, Director at Milestone Localization
Add a chatbot on your website
After the beginning of the pandemic, marketing and businesses have almost completely shifted online. In the given circumstances, Chatbots play a crucial role in engaging the customers as customers nowadays want quick answers to their questions and queries that are accessible 24/7. Thus, Chatbots are the most necessary marketing automation since they help you easily communicate and engage with clients.
Werner Jorgensen, Marketing and Sales expert at Tooleto
Free offers
After working with dozens of B2B businesses all around the USA, I can say with confidence that offering a tool or service for free is the best way to get new business in your door. Whether it’s a template, a spreadsheet, information, or something else – give it away.
You’ll earn trust and get your foot in the door faster than an aggressive sales strategy. So much of the online space is inundated with sleazy sales and smoke and mirrors that you have to earn someone’s trust before you ever get a conversation.
Mike Funkhouser, CEO of Small Business Mentor
Approach branding differently
B2B organizations will need to take the things they’ve learned from the pandemic and put them into action because remote events, digital networking, and social issues will continue to trend in 2022.
Branding, a customer’s perception of a product or service, has become more important for B2B than ever before. I believe we’ve fallen in love with our B2B partners just like we have to fall in love with a consumer brand. B2B companies are going to have to really home in on the following things:
- People will buy on the long tail – Brand and product differentiation will matter, even for commoditized products and services as products become more accessible.
- Transparency and positions matter – Businesses have to be more concerned than ever about ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) than they have had to in the past.
- Multi-channel is key – Traditional “smile and dial” will be replaced by automated programs that feel personal.
Bo Bothe, CEO of BrandExtract
Podcasting
I’ve found podcasting has been a tremendous help in B2B brand building over the past few years. Although I’ve co-hosted 2 podcasts over the past 10+ years, our experience helping create and market podcasts for B2B clients is more compelling.
A few years ago, we helped build a content and marketing strategy for the Craving The Future podcast, which resulted in the host landing a global hotel client within months after launching.
The best way to get into podcasting is to leverage your network to secure interesting content and interviews. The bigger the names, the more likely they are to generate interest and provide further leverage to secure future high profile guests.
Industry influencers are also likely to have their own following and market the podcasts to their networks for added reach.
Kent Lewis, President & Founder Anvil
Niche marketing
Niche marketing makes selling easier because you are targeting a specific audience and you can ensure that your offering is tailored to meet the needs of your audience. They will immediately know that you are perfectly positioned to help them.
Because you are clear on what you’re offering then your content will flow more easily. Everything that you create can be done so with your target audience in mind.
Louise Burke, founder of Zapp Communications
Conclusion
Do you see it? The line between B2C and B2B marketing is blurred and you can’t really tell where one’s beginning or ending. That’s because in both cases the human should be in your focus. Moreover, marketing trends that really work for B2B companies are rapidly changing, so to stay in the game you must always be ready to implement the newest B2B marketing tips.
Although part of these B2B marketing tips were popular for some time now and showed how effective they are, some of the B2B marketing tips listed in this article are new in the marketing world. That means, you are lucky you find out about them before everyone else and you can become an early adopter and leverage this advantage.
More must-read stories from Enterprise League:
- Golden rules about Google advertising for small businesses.
- B2B payment solutions of the modern age to transform your business.
- All the tips and apps you need to successfully manage a remote team and work from home.
- 36 Bulletproof psychological tactics for successful marketing.
- Cold emailing tips from experts for your more successful lead generation.
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