Successful companies are constantly looking for ways to stay ahead of their competition and continue to push the envelope for their products and services.
One of the best ways to seize the marketplace is through business to business (B2B) relationships. It provides a steady aspect to your companies growing book of business.
If your company isn't capitalizing on that yet, you have nothing to fear. In fact, there are several tactics that you can try to begin marketing more to other companies.
Here are several B2B marketing strategies for you to consider and see which ones your business would thrive from.
1. Describe Your Buyers Avatar
One of the best things you can do for your marketing efforts is to figure out who will purchase your product or service.
In order to understand your customers better, come up with a buyers persona for the companies you're looking to sell to.
What companies can benefit from your products? Is there a certain industry that they're in? Why do they need your product? What benefits will they see after purchasing your service?
Answer these questions and questions like them in order to obtain an in-depth description of the businesses your marketing efforts are going to try and target moving forward.
2. Create a Conventional Marketing Plan
Sometimes the best strategies are the ones that require you to go back to the basics. Just because you're targeting businesses instead of individual customers doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel.
Building a marketing plan will help you list out measurable goals and how to reach them.
Better yet, you'll have a plan that's backed up by the research you find and the data it represents. Start off by performing a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the market and how you can capitalize on it.
3. Study Your Target Companies
Just because you've created a buyers avatar for the companies you're trying to target, doesn't mean you know everything about them.
In fact, the B2B market is no different than an individual consumer market in that it's constantly changing and trending.
Ask yourself these questions early and often for studying your target companies: what social media outlets do they use? What events are they going to? Are there keywords you can capitalize on for your SEO?
All of the answers you find will help you model your entire B2B marketing techniques. You can cut out the fat and focus solely on marketing channels and avenues that will yield higher B2B conversion rates.
4. Design a B2B Website
If you're unfamiliar with what a B2B website is, it is exactly as it sounds: a website that has the sole purpose of selling your service/product to other businesses.
What's the purpose of it? To be more refined. Simply put, if your goal is to build more B2B sales, you have to have a B2B website in your marketing plans. It's a necessity.
There are several things you'll want to check off when launching your B2B website.
These things include, but are not limited to, sending a clear message across the website, integrating a blog, having a simplistic layout, constructing detailed product descriptions, and building CTAs into your content.
At the end of the day, your B2B website needs to show companies what you can deliver on that your competition simply can't match. The content and layout of your site need to reflect that.
5. Join Forces with a Marketing Agency
If you want to excel in the marketing areas of your business, why wouldn't you partner up with the best and the brightest in the industry to do so?
Perhaps your expertise is solely on the production and manufacturing of the products that you sell. You lack in the areas of marketing and business expertise. There's absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that.
If you know that marketing is one of your weaknesses, then find a marketing agency that can turn your weakness into a strength.
Your competition won't know what's gotten into you. You'll catch them completely by surprise and, in so doing, will be the company that draws in B2B clientele while the competition is caught napping.
A marketing agency will help you gain access to more marketing expertise, resources, social media know-how, and scalability for your advertisements.
6. Prioritize B2B Marketing in Your Annual Budget
B2B sales can be a monumental game-changer for your business, therefore you need to fund the B2B marketing as such.
Start by prioritizing your B2B marketing endeavors as you set the annual budget for your business.
You may want to consider placing 8 to 10-percent of the revenue that you receive back towards more B2B marketing. This falls into the "spend more to make more" philosophy, but it's proven to work.
What's the beauty of it? If you feel like it isn't working down the road, you can always adjust the budget and spend less. Just remember, marketing efforts sometimes take time to yield the best returns. Don't give up on your campaigns too quickly.
Incorporate These B2B Marketing Strategies into Your Efforts
Now that you've seen several examples of B2B marketing strategies, it's time for you to figure out which ones make sense for you to incorporate.
Don't be afraid to try a few of these B2B strategies out. See if they work for your business and industry. If not, try a few others out that may make a bit more sense.
