If you're like many business owners, your goal is to generate more sales, leads and engagement across your marketing platforms. Your specific goals will depend on your industry and type of business. Generally speaking, there are two types of companies: B2B and B2C.
B2C stands for "business to consumer." B2C companies create products or services for individuals. Think clothing stores, pet supply retailers, Netflix, or any place that offers a physical product or service for one person to use.
The other type of company is B2B, or "business to business." These organizations create products or services for companies or organizations. Examples include email marketing, live chat support and theme companies.
There's a middle ground where one of these instances could transfer to the other. For example, the owner of a personal blog might seek out a theme company for their website. But the fact remains that the product is designed to help the brand, and consequently helps the individual.
Today we are going to look at several B2B marketing strategies you can use to grow your brand.
1. Understand your customers.
We mentioned that B2B companies focus on helping other businesses instead of individual consumers, so it's vital to understand the industry you want to target.
Imagine trying to promote your product or service when you have no idea what problems other businesses face and what they hope to achieve. You won't have an easy time pitching your solution when you don't understand the problem.
Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can start researching your audience today. We suggest you begin by examining your customer feedback and satisfaction forms. You can learn a lot about your audience by looking at what the company representatives have to say.
For example, if your business creates themes for other websites, and a common complaint is that there are not enough designs to choose from, you've uncovered a pain point. Your audience wants variety, so delivering on this factor will help you grow your business. Create new themes and showcase them, and don't forget to emphasize the number of themes available in your marketing materials.
As you learn more about the businesses that use your product, you'll start to see new areas where you can improve and fine-tune your product.
2. Actively build an email list.
Once you understand your audience, it's time to start thinking about your lead list. All businesses in both B2C and B2B markets need leads to thrive. The best way to generate more leads for your business is by using email marketing.
Email marketing has a return on investment of 4,400%, making it one of the best ways to connect with more prospects, and B2B companies tend to have a 47% higher open rate than B2C companies. As someone who sells a product to another business, you have to enter this arena if you want to see explosive growth.
Additionally, only 25% of all consumers who visit your website are ready to buy. Connecting with prospects through email will warm them up and get them one step closer to becoming a customer.
You can generate more email leads by putting a contact form on your website for visitors. Let them know what they can expect from your newsletter. Include a promotion or exclusive lead magnet to improve your chances of bringing in new subscribers.
Don't forget to reach out to your followers on social media to see if they have subscribed. There's a good chance that most of your audience on Facebook found your brand through a friend and hasn't subscribed to your email list. A simple message on your timeline with an incentive to subscribe will help you build your lead list.
3. Segment your audience.
Now that you're generating leads from businesses interested in your product, it's time to segment your audience. Lead segmentation is when you divide your subscribers based on their buying habits, personality traits or goals.
For example, a sporting goods store would segment its content for football and baseball fans separately. The goal is to improve personalization and get more people to engage with your brand, because they'll get content they are interested in reading.
If you're a B2B company, you may want to segment your list based on what customers hope to achieve by using your product. For example, if you run a live chat company, find out if the businesses looking at your brand need a company to do detailed tech support or simply reroute users to relevant blog posts. Both problems have unique solutions, and segmenting your list will allow you to dive into each need and deliver personalized results.
You can segment your audience by encouraging your customers to answer questions on your registration form. Let's say someone is signing up for your live support newsletter; you could include a field on the form that asks the users precisely where they need help with their service team.
When you segment your audience, you learn more about the people who frequent your website. This step will help you with advanced customer research, which enables you to create personalized content and promotions.
4. Work on your SEO.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is crucial for the success of your B2B company. Brands use SEO to increase the quantity and quality of the leads who visit their website. This strategy goes hand in hand with intensive marketing campaigns and big product releases. In other words, your site needs to be visible to users if you want to see more growth.
There are two types of SEO strategies you can use. The first is called on-site SEO. This technique involves improving your website to improve your SEO score. You can work on speeding up your page load times, submit your sitemap to Google, and use the right keywords in your blog posts, URLs and throughout the rest of your website.
Off-site SEO is a bit trickier. You can improve your off-site SEO by writing compelling content that provides value to your readers. If you include something significant about your industry's next breakthrough, businesses are likely to share and use the link in their content.
You can also work with other publications in your industry. For instance, if your business is a live chat service, you might partner with a communications company by writing content for its blog. You'll be tasked with writing content that entertains or educates the other site's readers while including links to your own content.
These practices, when done ethically and correctly, will improve your SEO score. As a result, you're likely to generate more traffic, sales and engagement.
There are plenty of similarities between B2Bs and B2Cs, but there are certainly differences worth pointing out. If you look at businesses as your customers, you'll have a much easier time creating marketing material and content that meets your subscribers' and customers' needs. The more time you spend with clients, the easier time you'll have reading their needs in the future. As a B2B company, you need frequent interaction and engagement with your audience to stay on top of your industry. Using the practices mentioned here, you'll be well on your way to growing your B2B company.