If you’ve never come across it before, you might be wondering what the acronym B2B stands for. But don’t worry, it’s simple! It stands for Business-to-business.
B2B is a marketing strategy where one business or company sell products or services to another business or company instead of an individual customer.
It is important to differentiate B2B from B2C since the strategies are totally different and applied in different scenarios.
The main difference between the two strategies is the audience. While B2B targets fellow businesses and companies B2C targets customers who are product end users.
In this article, we’ve discussed five most effective B2B marketing strategies that you can apply.
- Email Marketing
Business-to-business email marketing refers to a specific type of email marketing strategy where you target your email campaigns to businesses other than individual customer.
Most Effective Email Marketing Practices
Filter Leads
Every marketing strategy starts with lead generation. On lead generation, you need to distinguish between customers shopping for personal interest and those shopping for business needs.
Filtering the leads ensures you bring the right people on board, making it easier for you to customize each message based on each client’s needs.
Also, the filter ensures that you only work on the right prospect, saving you time, energy and resources.
Craft the Perfect Subject Line
A perfect subject line is one which is short, precise and eye-catching to make sure the reader goes on to read the body of the email.
Your email subject may either entice the reader provoking them into getting more information from the content therein or put off the reader to a point of deleting the email without opening it.
Ensure that your subject makes your reader curious to know more about your product.
Don’t Send too many emails
Sending too many emails is a turn-off to anyone so avoid it. Nobody wants their email box to be filled with promotional emails
One or two well-crafted emails are enough, you do not need a thousand emails to convince your prospect to buy your product.
Speak Directly to the Target
This will engage and captivate the recipient to read to the end. It also shows that you have done your search well on the kind of business there are into.
Keep the Email Short and Precise
This is aimed at making the receiver read to the end without getting bored and understand your message and hence is able to respond accordingly.
- Cold Calling
In the sales and marketing field, cold calling refers to an outreach method where a salesperson attempts to solicit business from prospects with whom they have had no prior contact over the phone.
In this case, you will be making calls to business owners or the board of directors to sell them your products.
It is quite difficult because these are people you haven’t talked to or met before. The probability of them turning you down is very high. Definitely, you need to brace yourself for this task.
Below are a few tips that will help you have a meaningful conversation that will bear fruit.
- First, carry out pre-call research, people like to talk to someone who is knowledgeable.
- Write a cold calling script
- Find a good time to call
- Lastly, learn how to deal with objections.
This method of marketing aims at making people know that the business is real, increases conversations around the particular product and helps someone to gain insight as well as customer feedback which is important for the growth of the business.
- High-Performance Website
A website is an integral part of business success that you cannot ignore in this day and age. It is often the first in-depth experience a customer gets to learn more about the products or services. It is basically your first ‘sales person’.
So, you have to ensure that it is professional, easy to use, and appealing. A good website will bring corporates your way, impress them, and convince them to do business with you.
Below are several things you can do to transform your website into a high-performance lead-generating machine.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) make sure to use keywords on the main page of your site and on the educational content. This will help bring traffic to the page.
- Educational Content – People spend a lot of time on the internet trying to find answers. Let your website be where they find the solution.
- Focus your effort on educating and solving people’s problems. When prospective buyer finds an answer to their problem on your website, they are more likely to return to your firm for your products or services.
- Links – Utilize both internal and external links. This will help your website perform better in search engine results.
- Offers- Instead of waiting for your website visitors to make the first move, you can give them the opportunity to engage with you more by including offers on your website.
- Social Media Marketing
This is the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok for brand promotion, target audience growth, driving website traffic, and increasing sales.
More than half of the world’s population is on social media. When social media was first made, it was designed to be a place for people to connect and have fun. Over the years, it has grown and diversified. Nowadays, it’s also a place for people to do business.
Many businesses have social media accounts. They use them to broadcast their products and make sales.
B2B marketing on social media is easy and cost-effective since you do not have to visit the physical office to pitch your business idea. You can do business whenever and wherever you are.
B2B Social media marketing tactics include; uploading content touching on what the target business does, tagging the audience, and then connecting with them. If it’s on Facebook, send them friend requests, or ask them to follow your page. After you have done all that you can send them a message requesting them to do business with you.
- LINKEDIN MARKETING
LinkedIn is a powerful B2B marketing and sales tool. Over 600 million professionals are on LinkedIn. This makes it the most effective place for B2B marketing. Here you are able to engage with decision-makers, influencers, and leaders.
Below are five ways to use LinkedIn for B2B marketing.
- Optimize your company page – You can do this by using a high-quality profile and cover photos and including relevant keywords to boost your SEO
- Create interesting and valuable content
- Run targeted Ads.
- Encourage your colleagues to share their expertise.
Leverage LinkedIn search features to find sales prospects.
