A few years ago, a good B2B marketing strategy would have involved booking an in-person appointment with your potential client and presenting the ins and outs of your company in detail. You would have given a good and broad explanation of your products and services and shown your client precisely why you would be such a good fit, with ROI statistics, long-term plans, and meticulously crafted budgets abound. B2B marketing took the more rational, thought-out approach compared to its more emotionally-charged B2C counterpart. But this, especially after the pandemic, is no longer true.
B2B Marketing strategies have developed and grown in a more humanistic way, treating businesses as people. This new approach to B2B Marketing humanizes the company and tries to make the client feel understood and confident that their problem will be solved.
In this article, you’ll find 8 tips for building an effective, modern, human-first B2B marketing strategy.
1. Humanize your campaign
Each company is different. And, behind every company, there are decision-makers with specific needs and wants. It is essential to place yourself in your client’s shoes and assure them that you’ll be completely in charge of whatever you are offering.
This method of speaking to the people behind the business has become an essential component of effective B2B marketing and has been adopted by companies across the wide-sweep of industries in this space. It is easy to forget that in the end, just as with B2C companies, people are the ones doing the buying, and thus their pains and hopes need to be at the fore of your marketing efforts.
2. Give your clients quality content
You can’t just give them content; it has to be quality content. A frequent mistake B2B organizations make is educating their buyers on their own companies, products, or services when their buyers are instead trying to understand the problems they face and the solutions that are available to them. Try to help them step by step, starting with that problem and then relating it to their company. How can you do that?
Give them content that talks about their problems and that presents positive solutions. This is your best opportunity to not only present how you want your brand to sound and feel, but to show that you understand the issues they are dealing with and that you are an expert in their field. The large deal sizes of B2B selling can make the quality of your content all the more important as businesses need to gain great trust in you before being willing to commit to large contracts.
3. Use social media to create awareness
You may assume that social media marketing is largely reserved for B2C businesses, but actually, it has frequently proven quite useful for creating brand awareness among B2B customers. Don’t worry if you’re not able to immediately convert a lot of leads, instead focus on showing your clients who you are, how will you solve their problems, what your brand’s values are, and how that will impact them as clients. Create awareness and make your brand be known for what you are great at—B2B audiences can require a great deal of nurturing to convert and social media is a great place to begin and continue this nurture process.
4. Think about the “end-user.” Always.
Yes, you will have to reach out to the decision-maker or CEO of your clients’ business to close a deal. But if your final campaign is user-centric, that decision-maker or CEO will feel relieved to know that you empathized with their problems, needs, interests, and challenges and that you have the know-how to solve them.
5. Investigate each of your potential clients
Account-based marketing (ABM) is an essential approach for the modern B2B marketer, but while one targeted marketing strategy may work for one business that appears to be a potential customer, it can fall flat with another. Therefore, it is imperative to do as much research on the clients you reach out to as possible.
While many businesses may simply buy a list of emails and phone numbers and start reaching out to speak to all of the benefits their service has to offer, without knowing the pains and gains that each prospect cares the most about they will likely burn through these contacts without having made an impact.
What are their needs? What are their numbers? How much are they willing to spend? Are they at the right stage of their lifecycle for your services? Understand at which point of their company’s history they are currently and how have they shifted their journey as a company.
6. Digital is the future
COVID-19 and the use of digital technology started as a crisis response. People and companies were forced to offer their products or services through a digital platform to survive. However, digital is now part of our everyday, “normal” lives. We were initially forced to go digital, but it has started to become a choice.
As with meetings, classes, and shopping, B2B marketing has gone the way of the digital world. While approaches like direct mail and in-person events continue to have their place in modern B2B marketing, particularly with companies with larger deal sizes, the primary focus is now more than ever on digital methods. Before considering exploring more traditional methods of marketing, a strong online presence, including an up-to-date website and a substantial library of online content, should be your first priority.
7. Make it remote
As stated before, digital is the future. The world just changed and we have to shift not only to a remote strategy but to a remote mindset. In-person meetings can instead now be used as tools to “spoil” our clients. Always take full advantage of any opportunity you have to make your day-to-day interactions remote to simplify your processes and systems and make it easier for your audience to find information, place orders, arrange services, or solve doubts.
8. Take advantage of technology
Content doesn’t have to only be written. Make use of the wide range of content formats available; use video, audio, Instagram lives, photography, and other visual aids to catch the attention of your audience. Not all potential leads will be equally receptive to the same type of content, so it’s important to try out as many as possible and provide a variety of ways to grab your audience's attention and let them learn more about you. Use these formats to stand out and continue to look for ways to keep innovating your content output.
We live in a constantly evolving world. Organizations evolve. Processes evolve. People evolve. And we, as marketers, must evolve, adapt, change, and innovate in turn to reach our customers. Maintaining a reputation as a leader is crucial to building trust with your audience, and the only way to stay a leader is to keep pushing forward with new approaches.
Take advantage of what you know. Keep researching. Keep learning. Work to reach your savvy, more informed customers, and differentiate yourself from the competition.
