30 Best Strategies for B2B Marketing

strategies for b2b marketing

What is B2B Marketing?

Any marketing strategy or content targeted at a business or organization is known as B2B (business-to-business) marketing. B2B marketing strategies are typically used by companies that sell their goods or services to other businesses or organizations rather than to consumers.

The goal of B2B marketing is to increase brand awareness among other businesses, sell them the benefits of your good or service, and turn them into clients.

Why B2B Marketing?

Because most businesses rely on the products or services of other businesses to function, B2B marketing is essential. It is extremely rare for an organization’s entire production and distribution process to be completely self-contained.

Your favorite clothing brand, for example, is likely to source raw materials from farms and fabric dyes from chemical companies. Your favorite cell phone manufacturer most likely sources the components for their devices from third-party suppliers and pays shipping companies to distribute the finished product.

How do these connections between vendors arise? Finding B2B marketing opportunities is the first step, followed by focusing your branding and marketing message on a business that requires your goods or services.

Another important reason for B2B marketing is the duration of B2B relationships and the potential for increased profits. Typically, selling to consumers entails a single purchase of a low-cost item. When one company sells to another, the cost of the good or service may be considerable and required on a regular basis.

For instance, a contract lasting several months and costing tens of thousands of dollars might be involved when a landscaping business sells services to a large office campus. This differs from a customer paying for a one-time backyard landscaping project.

What to consider before choosing a B2B marketing strategy?

The Modern B2B Funnel

Before anything else, make sure that your B2B marketing strategies employ these essential components of the modern B2B funnel or buyer’s journey.

The B2B marketing funnel has evolved into more of a looping roller coaster ride. This is due to the fact that buyers frequently repeat actions during their purchase journey, particularly during the research phase.

A diagram of the modern marketing funnel for your b2b marketing strategy
WebFX describes the new B2B buyer’s journey, which includes looping stages as well as critical post-purchase elements.

As you develop your strategies, keep in mind the following stages of the modern buyer’s journey:

  • Awareness: At first, buyers become familiar with specific products or services. This frequently occurs when they ask a question or find a solution to a problem.
  • Consideration: Multiple buyers conduct extensive research, looping from task to task as they compare alternatives and consult each other repeatedly. Later in the consideration stage, the first communication with sales representatives takes place.
  • Purchase: Buyers have been persuaded and converted, but the journey does not end there. In some ways, it’s just getting started.
  • Post-Purchase: Buyers expect excellent customer service and support. If they are pleased, they will continue to buy from you (thus loyalty is presented as a loop).

So, before you dive in and start implementing a bunch of B2B marketing strategies or supply your marketing toolbox with every feasible platform, consider these factors specific to your business:

What is the type of your offering? (Product, Service, or Both)

Before diving into a B2B marketing strategy, it’s essential to define your offering because it will establish your strategies, messaging, and channel outreach.

Indicate whether you are selling a product, a service, or a mix of the two.

Does your audience seek fundamental or total value?

Determine the type of value that your target audience seeks. A B2B customer looking for fundamental value is only interested in the value that the product or service provides, whereas a total value prospect wants that and more, such as an exceptional experience.

This data can then be used to guide how you position your B2B product or service in the market, as well as how you direct your marketing messages.

How can you help with their pain points?

Before constructing your B2B marketing strategies, conduct extensive research on your target audience and become deeply familiar with their pain points. You must determine what they require and whether or not you can assist them.

You’ll also need to figure out what sets you apart from the competition. Having this information before developing your B2B marketing strategy can help you choose the right messaging, channels, and engagement tactics.

What are the Different B2B Marketing Channels?

Understand first the types of channels you must cover and how to use them. Here’s a list of the top B2B marketing channels to consider:

Content Marketing

One of the most common B2B marketing channels is content marketing. It entails making relevant content for your target audience in order to establish your brand as a field expert (e.g. blog articles, white papers, video content, podcasts, ultimate guides, and case studies)

Email Marketing

Email is one of the most effective ways to convert leads into customers. It’s quick, simple, and personalized. It’s frequently used in tandem with other marketing strategies, such as social media marketing and content marketing.

For example, if you sell software to businesses, you could use social media to capture their interest in your product and then follow up with them via email when they land on your website.

Paid Search/PPC

Another widely known B2B marketing channel is paid search. It involves paying search engines to have your ad displayed next to specific keywords when someone searches for them online. This is useful because it allows you to reach specific groups of people who have already manifested an interest in what you are trying to sell.

Partner Marketing

Partnership marketing is the strategic collaboration of two or more businesses that already have relationships with your target audience and will promote your product or service through their own channels.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO improves your website’s visibility on search engines like Google and Bing, allowing more people to find it when they’re looking for information about your industry or products/services.

SEO aims to ensure that when people search for things related to your business, your website appears near the top of the results. That’s how people will find you, and if ranking at the bottom, you might miss out on potential customers!

Social Media

Social media is an effective B2B marketing channel that allows businesses to interact with their customers. It is a great way to engage with your audience, learn what they want, and get feedback on your products. The most popular social media platforms for B2B are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Each platform has its own unique features that make it ideal for different types of businesses and audiences.

Referral Marketing

B2B referral marketing is an excellent way to expand your existing customer base. You can ask them to refer your company to others, and in exchange, you can provide incentives for those referrals. This allows you to expand your reach and grow your business without spending money on advertising.

30 Best Strategies for B2B Marketing

1 – Have a Formal Marketing Plan

According to data, more B2B teams are using formal plans to guide their branding and marketing, which is a significant and encouraging shift. In the year 2022, 66% of B2B marketers identified using a formal marketing plan, taking a more strategic and proactive approach to tactics rather than an unorganized and reactive approach to the marketplace.

A tactical marketing plan and a strategic marketing plan are not the same things. A strategic marketing plan incorporates market research with a brand situation analysis.

One of the most common approaches is to use your marketing agency or an internal committee to determine your top 5 to 10 competitors and perform a SWOT analysis on each. Cross-reference your competitors’ SWOT analyses with your own to identify whitespace—areas where the market is currently lacking or strengths that only your company can bring to the table.

With this information, you can create a brand strategy and a better messaging platform that effectively markets the characteristics that distinguish your brand from the competition.

2 – Partner with B2B Marketing Experts

63 out of 100 B2B marketers say they outsource most of their marketing efforts to a content marketing firm. An agency is frequently the best option for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that cannot afford to establish a complete internal marketing department, equipped with strategic marketers, certified specialists, and subscriptions to the different tools and platforms that enable marketing programs to operate. Marketing agencies provide SMBs access to high-level marketing capabilities and capacity while allowing them to better utilize their internal resources.

3 -Refine Your B2B Marketing Strategy

Another factor that is frequently overlooked in marketing is conducting adequate research for B2B marketing strategies. It is the foundation of the entire process and can either help or harm the entire campaign.

Because the online marketing world is continuously changing, you should never stop researching.The following are just a handful of the topics to keep informed in order to remain ahead of the curve.

  • Research the organization. Along with researching the specific buyer personas that are being targeted, take a closer look at the buyer profile of the company footprint to understand stakeholder mapping and spot another potential decision that might be made on social media channels but hasn’t yet been shared with you and your business in marketing strategies.
  • Research the personas. Review your ideal buyer’s needs, challenges, desires, and motivators and analyze them objectively. For a variety of reasons, these characteristics can change over time.
  • Research key performance. Examine the relevant metrics, email marketing, data points, C suite, and performance analytics of website traffic and related conversion tracking.

Your main goal is to help other companies grow bigger and make more money. While this will never change, you must still understand their business model, social media content, b2b advertising, brand equity, pain points limiting their growth, landing page, and the best solutions for their challenges.

The research will help you better understand your potential clients and your marketing strategy. But keep in mind that this is something you must do on a regular basis.

You should conduct research consistently to avoid falling far behind your competitors with outdated information.

4 – Spend 10% of Revenue on Marketing

Regarding the marketing organization’s objectives, senior management and marketers have different perspectives. The management team anticipates that marketing will reduce customer acquisition expenses. Marketers, in contrast, believe it is more important to concentrate on developing and executing brand awareness and positioning strategies.

Senior leadership teams also expect marketers to display the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts, but marketers believe they lack the proper tools to do so. Other marketers believe that senior management should focus more on customer insights than on products and pricing alone.

How much should I spend on marketing? is one of the most frequently asked questions of marketing professionals. Informed by hundreds of marketing executives, this report found that 10% or more of an annual budget is the magic number.

The number of businesses allocating 10% or more of their company’s budget to marketing increased by 5% from the previous year’s report, reflecting the priorities of leaders facing increased competition online and offline. Advanced and automated marketing strategies, personalization, interactive content, and new user experience requirements all necessitate a larger portion of an organization’s budget. In addition to spending on marketing personnel and agency partnerships, the report identifies website development, digital marketing, and trade shows and events as the top three tactical areas in which marketers invested 10%.

5 – Test Your B2B Marketing Ideas

Marketing is neither simple nor strict. No, regardless of how many hours you spent having to figure out and fine-tune your idea, there are no guarantees.

For that reason, using the information gathered during your research stage to field-test your strategies is always a necessary next step.

Through growth-driven design, you can A/B test email campaigns, landing pages, and even website redesign. The goal is to find a combination with the highest conversion rate or keeps customers moving through your sales funnel more quickly and effectively.

Create leads by strategically placing call-to-action buttons throughout your website. In 2022, you can test the waters by updating your copy and color schemes, experimenting with new landing pages and actions, and implementing creative b2b marketing ideas to see what works best in the b2b market. There are so many things to try, and you’ll never figure out what works with your audience unless you split test.

You can also experiment with different pricing models to see if freemium works better than time-limited trials or money-back guarantees. You can also experiment with different lengths of promotions or different features included in each package.

The combinations and opportunities are endless. The more you try, the better your idea will be.

6 – Niche It Down

Remember, nobody wants a master of none, especially with regard to best practices for b2b marketing. Working with b2b marketing experts isn’t enough. Your company should work with a B2B marketing firm that specializes in your industry. Ideally, your strategy should be geared toward providing valuable content to specific buyer personas or industries.

Whether you empower bloggers in reaching the top of Google search results or you develop mobile applications, narrowing your focus will allow you to specialize and become a problem solver for a specific type of issue. People will recognize you as an expert in your field, which will help you increase awareness, gain more qualified leads, and, ultimately, grow your business.

The same goal should guide your B2B marketing strategy. Decide on your objective, your target market, and execute. Going more niche may result in fewer people entering your sales funnel, but they will be higher-quality leads with a greater likelihood of becoming customers.

Focusing too broadly may result in more email addresses, but unless your goal is to sell them, this isn’t such a big deal. It is far preferable to have fewer people in your sales funnel who are high-quality leads rather than a slew of low-quality leads from Facebook, where your ideal customers’ content marketing is not browsing, who drop off along the way. Sales growth is the main objective of successful B2B marketing; all other goals are secondary.

7 – Leverage Account-Based Marketing

Outdated, conventional marketing techniques may concentrate on attracting as many leads as possible to the top of the sales funnel for b2b customers with the minimum criteria required to demonstrate quick wins or revenue spikes.

Account-based marketing (ABM) refers to a personalized strategy for individual b2b buyers within an organization. This targeted strategy can be advantageous for a variety of reasons:

  • It increases the likelihood of gaining a new client.
  • It offers a greater rate of return.
  • It allows you to cultivate stronger customer relationships.
  • It reduces sales cycle length.

ABM allows you to directly target key decision-makers at companies that meet the criteria of your ideal prospective clients. Here, you concentrate on actual people and tailor the entire campaign to them. This results in a significantly shorter sales cycle, more successful conversions, and B2B customers.

When it comes to account-based marketing strategies, alignment between your sales and marketing teams is crucial for b2b marketers. Sales and marketing must collaborate to deliver an integrated B2B ABM strategy and tactics without appearing redundant or aggressive.

A diagram of traditional marketing vs. account-based marketing

In 2022, account-based marketing practices are ideal for customer acquisition efforts involving longer sales cycles and more complex deals, and they can be the deciding factor in closing large deals. It is, therefore, a high marketing strategy b2b marketing activities and marketing strategy that you should seriously consider implementing, as it can yield massive returns.

Even if you don’t immediately close the deal, SEO tools and account-based marketing will bring you closer to the relevant individuals at the companies that interest you. After the ABM campaign concludes, social media and referral marketing for decision-makers will be on their radar, as these marketing strategies will increase the likelihood of future contact.

8 – Establish Brand Culture and Values

Establishing your business’s core value proposition and culture is an essential component of an effective B2B marketing strategy in 2022. In modern b2b content, it is not sufficient to simply delight your customers; you must also delight your employees. Your internal working environment should motivate them to organically promote your brand. In addition, your employees can amplify your marketing efforts, so you want them to give it their all.

Employee activation requires more than simply requesting that your team members share content and maintain their LinkedIn profiles. It extends far beyond that.

To effectively “activate” your workforce, you should encourage them to curate and distribute b2b content that they are proud of and that genuinely interests them. In addition, you must develop an official program that motivates your team members to participate.

9 – Target millennials

By 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials. Merit’s B2B Millennials Report says that 73% of millennials help their companies decide what products or services to buy, and 30% of them are the only ones who decide.

73% of millennial workers are involved in decisions to purchase products or services for their company or business34% of millenials are the sole decision-maker regarding purchases 36% of millenials will weigh the opinions of friends and family before deciding to buy 69% of millenials will post a positive comment on social media if they're happy clients
Image Source

This means tailoring your B2B marketing strategies to the preferences of millennials, such as:

  • Frequency of response (like through live chat).
  • Mobile-friendly experiences (through geofencing and formatting).
  • Social media interaction (and not just LinkedIn!).
  • Cause-related advertising.

10 – Take a B2C approach

The distinctions between B2B and B2C marketing are blurring. This is due to the increasing competitiveness of the digital space and the increasing proportion of millennials among B2B buyers. According to the 2021 B2B Buyer Insights Report by Foleon, 80% of B2B buyers now also expect a B2C experience.

In order to stand out from the crowd and appeal to millennials, use B2C strategies such as:

  • Personalization.
  • Emotionally driven advertising.
  • Accessibility (to educational content and self-service).

11 – Cater to a longer buying cycle

B2B marketing typically involves a longer buying cycle than B2C marketing. Since the pandemic, however, according to a study conducted by McKinsey at the end of the year 2020, the buying cycle for B2B companies has grown even longer.

With tighter budgets, B2B buyers are researching products and services more thoroughly and calculating ROI in advance with greater precision. Therefore, it is essential to:

  • Create content to complement and not interfere with buyer research.
  • Utilize ROI-specific terminology and data in your messaging.

12 – Focus on first-party data

With the privacy update of iOS 14 and Google eventually disregarding cookies, it will be more difficult to achieve precise targeting. Knowing your audience is the first step in all types of marketing, so first-party-data-friendly marketing campaigns are crucial. Methods for gathering first-party data include:

  • PPC lead generation campaigns and email list construction.
  • Google Ads substitutes (like Microsoft or Amazon).
  • Utilizing A/B content testing to gather your own psychographic information (headlines, tone, related content suggestions).

13 – Supplement your automation with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing automation are not the same. The purpose of marketing automation software is to assist humans with simple and repetitive tasks. This still requires configuring workflows based on various scenarios and manually optimizing the data. AI, on the other hand, employs data to simulate human intelligence and reasoning in order to make predictions suggest optimizations, and dynamically implement them.

Combining automation and artificial intelligence provides the best of both worlds: the efficiency and time-saving benefits of automation, as well as the ability to recommend and make adjustments to the automation based on data-driven insights.

Listed below are a few examples of how AI can enhance automation:

  • Tools that generate highly personalized subject lines and email content within your email automation platform.
  • Smart Bidding strategies or the Google Ads Insights Page
  • Utilizing historical data for more precise lead scoring in a CRM.

14 – Refine Messaging & Positioning

While having a great logo, beautifully designed business cards, and rollups won’t hurt, your website will make the biggest impression. It should be your most effective sales representative.

Your website should appear impressive and perform even better. If it still looks the same as it did when your company was founded, you need to hire designers and developers who prioritize conversion optimization over visual aesthetics. Remember that aesthetics are irrelevant if the site is not effectively converting visitors into marketing leads.

“Lead conversions are used as a measure of success by more than 78% of B2B marketing companies (CMI)”

You can’t get around this. Your website requires to be leading, be excellent in product promotion, be easy for buyers to use, and be an expert at gathering data. Here is a list of tips for using brand awareness marketing automation software to make sure that your website works for you and not against you after the sale.

• Growth-Driven Design (GDD)

Newer B2B marketing agencies are increasingly implementing this B2b web redesign strategy because it allows them to keep what works and eliminate what doesn’t when trying a redesign. By focusing on rebuilding and launching only a few pages at a time, the navigation menu your business can save time and money and get a clear idea of how your pages are doing.

• Website speed is important

Studies indicate that 40% of users will leave your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. The speed of your website is crucial for attracting and retaining visitors’ long-term b2c marketing selling proposition enough to convert them into potential buyers.

In addition to the user experience, Google also takes into account how fast your digital marketing website is after the purchase. Don’t expect your site to be on the first page of a Google search if it loads very slowly.

• Your site needs to be secure

If your website lacks security, many users will avoid it at all costs. In 2022, Chrome will not even load a website before displaying an alarming warning about the website’s insecure marketing campaign when users visit. This will undoubtedly result in

• It should be mobile-friendly

Nowadays, your customers carry a pocket-sized computer screen. Spend the same amount of time developing and testing the mobile version of your website, as this is one of the primary ways potential customers search for your product or service via b2b marketing channels in 2020.

• Keep your messaging concise and direct

When a customer visits your website, the very first landing page should explain who you are and what you offer. Ensure that your message is clear and presented in an engaging manner.

15 – Employ dynamic content for personalized experiences

According to the most recent B2B Buyer Behavior Survey from Demand Base, 70% of buyers said that content that is relevant to their company and speaks directly to them was “very important.”

You can’t really make your website fit the needs of a certain company, but you can make it more personal by using dynamic content.

For example, you can set up different live chat options on different pages depending on how they found your website, like through an email or an ad. 

Depending on the category of the blog post they are reading, you can make pop-ups for different types of guides. Or you could change the headline on your home page based on how big your company is.

Another option would be to make a popup that asks for details that will help you lead the B2B buyer down a path that fits their needs.

Other dynamic content criteria include:

  • Stage in sales funnel or customer lifecycle.
  • Geolocation (such as offering discounts on tickets to nearby conferences).
  • Referral source (SERP, social media, email).
  • Website behavior (new or returning visitor, time on site, pages visited).

16 – Live Chat Functions, Virtual Assistants, and Conversational Selling 

Many marketers and business owners make the erroneous assumption that adding a virtual assistant or live chat function to their website is solely for handling customer complaints. It is a highly effective and potent engagement tool for customer support, but it is also much more. In fact, it has become a popular method of customer communication in 2022.

The former is not restricted to videoconferencing meetings during the sales and fulfillment phases, and the latter is not confined to online purchases. Buy online can also mean free versions, free trials, and do-it-yourself demonstrations. And remote human interaction can (and should) be offered through live chat at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

  • Firstly, 63% of millennials (who, as previously stated, constitute the majority of B2B buyers today) now prefer live chat over any other channel.
  • Second, despite the fact that 70% of the buyer journey is completed before the buyer interacts with sales (Leave me alone so I can research), B2B buyers still desire assistance.
  • Over 60% of B2B buyers have expressed a desire for more communication during the research phase, during the purchase process, and after the purchase (Leave me alone so I can research, but be available when I have questions.)

With live chat, you can personalize your campaigns to the page your visitor is on, which usually shows where they are in their journey. For instance:

  • Homepage: Run a “What are you trying to do?” chat that helps them find sales, support, or just to browse.
  • Blog Pages: Offer to answer questions or give advice about what the post is about.
  • Solutions page: Try “Need help figuring out which solution is best for you?”
  • Support pages: Support for live chat is very important for keeping people around.
An example of live chat
Image Source

It is essential to interact with customers who are already browsing your website. They are already interacting with b2b marketers on your website and have your products and services in mind. It is a quick and easy way for them to obtain the required information. A live chat feature can serve as your most effective salesperson.

17 – Have an SEO keyword funnel

Since B2B buyers conduct such extensive research these days and are not yet prepared to purchase, it is crucial to have organic content that ranks at each stage of their journey. In this way, you not only support their research, but also remain top-of-mind, demonstrate your expertise, and build trust throughout their entire process.

The B2B SEO guide by Backlinko provides an excellent overview of this strategy. They use a logistics services company as an example.

example funnel from the delivery logistics industry

The following can be obtained from this image:

  • Top-of-the-funnel keywords are extremely tactical, such as how-tos that assist buyers in performing their role effectively and help you identify pain points.
  • As the buyer becomes more informed, keywords for the middle of the funnel can incorporate more strategy-focused and comparative keywords.
  • Bottom-of-the-funnel keywords are concentrated and targeted on precisely what the buyer (now) wants (thanks to your education along the way).

There is much more to keywords for B2B marketing (such as intent and location modifiers), but this is a simplified version to help you get a general idea.

18 – Create career development content

Even though you’re selling to another business, the person who buys from you is still a person with a specific job in that business. Moreover, they search for more than just solutions online. Additionally, they are searching for opportunities to further their education, expand their skill sets, and advance their careers. Create content about career development to show that you are an expert, build relationships with people who might become customers, and use a whole new set of relevant keywords.

30 Important Life Lessons for Career Success
Try it. It works!

19 – Stay on top of algorithm updates

Technical SEO is not new, but its significance has increased over the past year due to algorithm updates. For instance,

  • With mobile-first indexing, you must ensure that Googlebot can access and generate your mobile content, as well as examine your structured data.
  • With the page experience update, you must improve your Core Web Vitals by minimizing the number of javascript commands, compressing images, and implementing lazy loading, among other things.
  • With Google’s BERT update, it is essential to target keywords based on the intent of the searcher.

And what SEO content would be complete without the overall reminder to consistently produce high-quality content that conveys E-A-T?

20 – Use emotion in your ads

I cannot count the number of articles claiming that B2C marketing focuses on emotion while B2B marketing focuses on logic.

However, science suggests that all decisions, including B2B purchasing decisions, have emotional grounds. Even though businesses spend more time considering options and have decision-making committees, these committees still consist of individuals.

B2B companies can (and must) incorporate emotion into their marketing campaigns.  From a B2B standpoint, you can be much more sophisticated, as in the following example:

 

An example of emotional advertisement made by American Express Open
This choice of words provokes some anger and indignation. (Image source)

21 – Combine broad match keywords with audience targeting in Google Ads

This is not a new strategy, but its importance has increased since we said goodbye to our friend modified broad earlier this year.

Without this keyword match type (and the helpful information that was previously available in the search terms report), you cannot be certain that your PPC campaigns are targeting the exact right search query. However, you can be certain that you’re targeting the correct individual.

A figure of Audience targeting in AdWords
Image Source

By using audience targeting and broad match keywords, you can reach a large number of the right people. B2B marketing is mostly aimed at the people who make decisions in the company, so this is especially helpful.

22 – Use LinkedIn Website Demographics for more targeted ads

When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2018, they introduced the ability to target Microsoft Ads with LinkedIn profiles. The LinkedIn Website Demographics tool, however, seems to receive relatively little attention. This feature allows you to analyze site traffic based on company, company size, job function, job characteristics, industry, geographic location, and more. Use these records to:

  • Segment audiences: Determine which roles and departments are clicking on your ads.
  • Further segment by website pixel: You don’t have to look at data for all of your website visitors. Instead, you can filter by the actions they take on your site that lead to conversions.
  • Compare audiences: Compare the pixel data for various job functions presented above. For instance, if a significant portion of your ad’s traffic consists of business development professionals who are not converting, you may need to modify your ad. If you receive substantial traffic but no conversions, you may wish to eliminate this audience segment entirely.

Insights from Linkedin Website Demographics can assist you in your other B2B marketing efforts, as you can gain a better understanding of who is conducting research and making decisions within your target organizations.

23 – Use Facebook ads, Messenger, and reviews

Is Facebook a profitable B2B marketing channel? 74% of people say they use Facebook for professional reasons, and business decision-makers spend 74% more time on Facebook than the general population. 

Here are some suggestions for incorporating Facebook into your B2B marketing strategy:

  • Complete your company page. Similar to your Google Business Profile, your Facebook business page serves as a second homepage for your company on a highly-visited website.
  • Facebook Messenger can be used for customer service and general inquiries (or Messenger ads).
  • Collect reviews. The focus of Millennials is less on analyst data and more on peer-to-peer reviews and recommendations. Facebook is an ideal location for providing this information on a platform they frequently use.

24 – Use LinkedIn posts, Pulse, and profile targeting

Utilizing LinkedIn as a social channel for B2B marketing is intuitive, but let’s review a few strategies:

  • Execute LinkedIn and Microsoft advertisements based on profile targeting, and then refine using LinkedIn Website demographics.
  • Utilize both blog posts and Pulse articles. Pulse articles have a permanent presence on your page and are indexed by Google; promoting them in posts gives them the additional exposure they require.
  • Start encouraging your employees to share your content on Linkedin. The employee network is ten times larger than the company’s followers, according to Linkedin. Even better, employee-shared content receives eight times more engagement than brand-shared content.

25 – Build community and relationships on Twitter

Twitter and Facebook are surprisingly tied as the second most popular social media platform utilized by B2B content marketers. It’s a great place to engage in conversation with prospects and customers, observe trending topics in your clients’ industries, and network with influencers.

Here are some Twitter marketing tips for b2b

  • Participate in and initiate conversations. One of the most prevalent social media use cases for millennial B2B purchasers is following discussions on topics of interest. Rather than expecting to be mentioned in popular conversations, why not start your own weekly chat?
  • Use it to build brand awareness and community: The bad news is that a tweet has an average lifespan of 20 minutes. The good news is that, unlike Facebook and Instagram, excessive posting will not hinder your efforts on Twitter. Post frequently to connect with your community, provide educational content, and even generate backlinks.
  • Use lists. Lists allow you to create custom feeds for your business. This allows you to cut through the noise and maintain a closer relationship with relevant followers. You may wish to create distinct lists for clients, influencers, and news sources.

26 – Run nurture campaigns

The terms drip and nurture campaigns are often used interchangeably, but they are distinguishable. Drip campaigns are a predefined series of time-based emails that you send to a segment of your list, typically with the goal of generating conversions. The recipients of nurture campaigns receive emails based on how they have interacted with your website and previous emails. For B2B marketing, nurture email campaigns are the most effective because they focus on educating the potential client as they engage with your brand and offer more personalized content to help strengthen the relationship.

litmus lead nurturing example
Image Source

27 – Increase click-through rates with video emails

We’ve all heard that video marketing has been the superstar of the year for the past five years. And email marketing has always been the MVP. So why not mix them? This winning combination can boost click-through rates by up to 300%.

You can use video as a preview clip for the content you want readers to click on, to reveal your company culture, or as part of a tutorial series to nurture leads. Here’s an example from OnBrand:

Onbrand email campaign

 

28 – Make sure your emails have plain text alternatives

Even when sending HTML emails, always include a plain text version. Not only will plain text emails pass spam, security, and privacy filters, but they will also be more compatible with smart watches and voice-assisted devices. This Litmus tutorial will walk you through the process of creating an optimized plain-text email.

29 – Create Content that Addresses Your Customer Journey

What distinguishes high-performing marketing agencies and marketers from their peers is a deep understanding of their customers’ biggest pain points and challenges, as well as their content needs and preferences, to name a few.

Interestingly, many B2B companies do not currently have buyer personas in place but plan to create them in the coming year to help improve the effectiveness of their demand generation efforts. According to a Demand Gen Report survey, only 27% of respondents said their personas were aligned with their messaging, and 30% said their efforts would need to be fine-tuned.

Mistargeted or irrelevant content and messaging frequently contribute to campaign failure. Detailed buyer personas provide an excellent opportunity for marketers to ensure that content is relevant to its intended audience and delivered via the channels they prefer.

Using customer insights, successful B2B marketers create specific marketing strategies for each buyer persona, as well as create and curate content that is relevant and valuable to consumers at each stage of the customer journey, in order to effectively connect, engage, and convert them.

30 – Acquire Digital Marketing and Technology Competencies

Consumers will continue to use digital and mobile more and more, and B2B marketers think that this will require them to learn digital marketing and technology skills that most marketers don’t have yet.

Only 7% of B2B marketers surveyed think they have a good way to collect data on customer behaviors, attitudes, and engagement that can be used to improve and change marketing strategies and tactics that are already in place.