B2B Marketing
B2B Marketing Guide

B2B Marketing Guide 2024: Strategies, Examples & Trends

Shiyam Sunder
|
May 31, 2024
B2B Marketing Guide 2024: Strategies, Examples & Trends

Contents

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Key Takeaways

Big market, big product, big customers, big capital, big ROI — when it comes to B2B, everything looks big. And that includes the difficulty of scaling your B2B brand to the next level.

Just so you know, 8 out of 10 startups fail within the first 18 months, while over 470,000 businesses take a sabbatical leave or file for total bankruptcy. Brisk, a B2B online sales and marketing platform founded in 2012, shut down in 2016, barely four years after its initial operations, due to low customer turnout, inefficient marketing, and eventual lack of cash flow.

Rewardme, a pioneer smart Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software founded in 2010, suspended its services five years after launch due to premature scaling, severe financial expenses, and low B2B lead generation as a result of poor marketing planning.

The list goes on and on, but what’s most important is that:

  • These businesses primarily lacked a proper marketing strategy to generate more capital and ROI,
  • Or they planned only for short-term benefits and failed to consider disruptive market changes in the long run.

To help you avoid that, we will explain B2B marketing, how to create an effective strategy that always works, and the best B2B practices for becoming a market leader in your industry.

What Is B2B Marketing?

Ask Google, and you’ll get tons of generic or literal answers, such as, “B2B marketing is a process of selling your product to another business.”

While that’s somewhat true, the definition ignores the human factors that contribute to the buying process and selling process.

  • The business you’re selling to is made of people.
  • These people make purchasing decisions based on the best interests of their company.
  • The decision-making process is a collective stage between all stakeholders involved.
  • Data is used as a major deciding factor, but human bias, resulting from emotions, experience, and lopsidedness, also contributes.

So, you see, you’re not actually selling to a business; you are selling to the people that hold the helms of that business.

Understanding this key difference helps shape your B2B growth marketing process and ensures you’re marketing your product’s benefits, not features. 

After all, people are looking for the solution to their problems, not your arsenal of irrelevant but brilliant APIs—whether as a company or individuals.

At TripleDart, we define business-to-business (B2B) marketing as a strategic industry-level process of creating awareness, connecting with stakeholders and high-level decision-makers of other businesses, and selling your product or professional services as a solution to their brand problems.

A perfect example is how Hubspot markets its Customer Relationship Management software to businesses like Trustpilot and Zendesk or how Asana markets its work management software to brands like Airbnb and Uber.

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Why is B2B Marketing Important?

More than one-third of B2B companies invest 5% of their total capital in marketing, and here’s why:

Generate High-value Leads

The surface aim of every marketing is to create awareness and visibility. But beyond that, you’re doing it to generate leads for your business. And it’s not just any leads we’re talking about. It is the leads that spend more and have a long lifetime value.

Take Hubspot as an example. This CRM B2B SaaS company generates around 25 million monthly website visits through content marketing. And quite a good number of their leads come from these 25 million visits, without including email leads and social media.

In May 2023, the Slack website recorded approximately 148.7 million visitors. You, therefore, can imagine how many signups the business generated during this period.

When buyers get to the consideration stage, they engage the internet to find solutions that fit in. In fact, 67% of buyers start their purchase journey online. So, B2B marketing helps you position your product and solutions in the right place — online — where the right audience can find it.

Build Market Credibility And Authority

While B2B enterprise marketing is purely a way to build awareness and generate leads, you’re also educating your leads in the process. For instance, if you search for “How to use a CRM software” on Google, Hubspot is going to take the first organic position (excluding the ads).

B2B marketing

HubSpot ensured this piece is detailed and actionable, with real-life applications, to provide relevant value to readers. So, when a buyer struggling with managing customer interactions reads this comprehensive article, they get answers to their queries and automatically trust HubSpot for future verifiable information.

Another example is Customer.io. This customer engagement platform builds itself as an authority on LinkedIn by handling subject matters and providing how-to tips for its over 15,000 followers.

By creating educational content around relevant topics and breaking them down into actionable processes, these two B2B brands position themselves as a go-to problem solver. This builds their credibility and authority in the industry.

Search engines also take this credibility into consideration when determining the overall relevance of a website and whether it should be recommended to users. Talk about the E-E-A-T of Google’s content algorithm.

Create A Steady Flow Of Revenue

Remember we talked about how B2B marketing helps generate high-value leads?

No leads mean no sales. High-quantity and low-quality leads mean little or no sales. High-value leads mean more sales. And the revenue you generate is what keeps your company going.

Brands like Brisk and Rewardme were unable to achieve high-value leads and had to shut down. After all, if you’re making no sales or turning in no revenue, there’s no way you can keep up with the capital required to run your business.

Effective B2B marketing helps you avoid this and acquire good leads continuously. A percentage of revenue generated from these leads is invested in your marketing expenses to generate new leads and maintain business operations, while the rest stays in your pocket.

The cycle continues that way.

Collect Feedbacks To Evolve Your Product

B2B marketing exposes your product to the world. This is going to attract leads, but it will also attract criticism.

In no time, your product review will be all over the internet—which can be good news if you’re doing it right or bad news if you're doing it wrong.

However, what’s most important is that you get to see your product from other people’s lenses. Sometimes, because we ideated and built the product or service, it becomes very difficult to point out ironically obvious flaws.

So, in one way or the other, B2B marketing helps us generate reviews and feedback. The final data from these collations can help you improve your product or deliver better services before competitors catch on.

4 Stages Of B2B Buyer’s Journey And Impact On Marketing

B2B Buyer’s journey is simply the touch points or processes your buyers go through to become aware of their problems, evaluate different ways to solve it, and decide on an appropriate solution.

Let’s break it down:

  • Awareness Stage or Problem Identification: At this point, the buyer realizes they have a problem. In the B2B industry, this is usually a big problem that could go as far as crippling brand operations or limiting progress.
  • Consideration Stage or Solution Seeking: The buyer seeks help by looking for solutions to this problem and identifying the businesses offering them.
  • Decision-making Stage or Supplier Selection: The decision stage involves outlining all the solutions available and picking the best one based on different criteria, such as cost, usefulness, and long-term scalability.
  • Buying Stage: The buyer chooses one solution and purchases it.

While there’s a stereotypical view of the buyer's journey as something only salespeople need to focus on, the explanation above makes it obvious that marketing also plays a huge role in the first three stages.

Your marketing strategy typically:

  • Decide if B2B buyers are effectively aware of the solutions you provide when they are in the consideration stage.
  • Helps buyers make informed decisions and shows why your solution best meets their needs.

It’s important to know that a single person does not make the purchasing decision in a B2B brand. According to a report by Gartner, the typical buying group for a B2B includes 5 to 10 top-level individuals.

What’s worse, each of these decision-makers is well armed with necessary information that influences the final buyer’s journey, thanks to the advent of digital marketing and readily available online resources. 

So, it’s getting harder for previously glorified sales tactics to actually move the needle anymore. And that leaves the bulk of everything to your brand’s marketing team.

The initial presentation of your solution through different marketing channels to potential buyers during the consideration stage determines if you’ll eventually become a go-to name on their decision list or not.

Thus, you have to consider the factors that influence each of these touch points in a buyer’s journey, with questions like:

  • How can we help buyers clearly identify their problems and how our solution addresses them?
  • What strategies can we use to provide comprehensive and accessible information during the research phase?
  • How can we build and showcase our company's reputation and credibility to potential buyers?
  • What methods can we use to demonstrate the value and benefits of our solution compared to competitors?
  • How can we engage and persuade the different stakeholders within the buyer's decision-making unit?
  • What approaches can we take to highlight the cost-effectiveness and ROI of our solution within buyers' budget constraints?

The outcome of these questions will help you create a robust marketing strategy and a lasting marketing plan.

4Ps Of B2B Marketing Mix

The 4Ps of B2B marketing represent the fundamental element considered when building an effective strategy to scale your B2B product and services. These Ps include Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. 

Other Ps like People, Process, and Physical Evidence are often considered outside the marketing mix, but they are also crucial for every result-oriented B2B marketing approach.

However, it’s important to note that each P of the mix is interdependent on the others. Your product can only be as successful as your effort in promoting it in the right place and at the right price.

Product

Product is the solution or service you want to market to the buying group of a business. 

For instance, Microsoft provides an Enterprise Management System (ERP) for enterprise-level organizations, Hubspot provides CRM for SMEs and large brands, and Alibaba provides a selling platform for suppliers and wholesalers.

Prior to marketing, you need to know:

  • If your product is solving a real problem.
  • Who is your product helping?
  • What is your exact target market?
  • Is there enough demand for your product?
  • Is the demand seasonal or all-round?
  • Is your product scalable as time goes on?

Answers to these questions simplify other marketing Ps.

Price

Price is how much you want businesses to pay in return for your service.

As mentioned previously, knowledge of your target market will help you determine how much to charge and which subscription model to use. 

You definitely don’t want to charge too low and go bankrupt. That’s pretty much what Brisk did. You also don’t want to charge too much and risk losing your potential buyers. 

Instead, you should seek realistic pricing that takes market affordability and your target revenue into consideration.

Place

Place denotes where you want to market your solutions to your B2B target audience. In a simpler sentence, it is where your solution earns maximum visibility from potential buyers.

Similar to product and pricing, where you choose determines if your marketing strategy will succeed or stale. 

For example, using TikTok as your main marketing channel for a B2B SaaS CRM software will barely yield any results. Alternatively, LinkedIn and Facebook will produce more results since more than half of B2B businesses that need CRMs spend their time on these two platforms.

When choosing the right place to connect with your ideal buyers, you should consider the following:

  • Where are your buyers likely to spend more time?
  • Which distribution channels will give you maximum visibility?
  • Which channels require less effort but more profitability and effectiveness?

Sometimes, you might need to conduct an A/B testing to see which channel works best. 

Promotion

This includes all the other marketing strategies, and additional effort you put in to gain more brand awareness, recognition, validation, and leads.

In this case, you can use:

  • Paid promotion, including traditional TV commercials, digital social media ads, and PPCs. 
  • Organic promotion, including intensive content marketing, cold outreach, non-paid social media, and email marketing.

While both organic and paid marketing have their advantages and can exist independently, combining the two will help you achieve good results faster.

For instance, B2B startups can use paid advertising to boost their customer base and generate enough testimonials or reviews. Afterward, they can use these testimonials and client reviews to create case studies or develop convincing email sequences as part of organic marketing efforts.

Salesforce is a perfect example of a B2B company using combined promotional tactics. They implement both paid ads and robust organic content marketing with SEO to reach as many audiences as possible.

Types of B2B Marketing Channels

B2B marketing channels are outlets through which you can connect with your target audience to educate them, solve their queries, convince them to take action, or directly slam your product on their faces.

Primarily, these channels are used to create awareness, connect, and generate high-value leads. They typically include:

  • Traditional channels such as Banner prints, Newspapers, and TVs.
  • Digital channels such as online content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and webinars.

Although traditional marketing channels still hold a candle in the modern world, digital marketing channels have evolved to be more dominant and effective. 

So, we'll focus on the digital channels only.

Content Marketing Channel

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves planning, creating, and distributing content in the form of blog articles, guides, case studies, videos, and downloadable materials. This article is a perfect example.

As with any other marketing, the purpose is to create awareness, build your brand as an authority in the industry, and stay at the top of your audience’s mind when it’s time to buy. To achieve any of these, your content must be valuable, solve a problem, be optimized for both the reader and the internet, and finally, be accessible.

If you’re wondering why content marketing is such a big buzzword, then here’s why:

  • Several years back, 70% of buyers would rather learn of a product through an article than through advertisements. 
  • Today, over 44% of buyers still consume more than one content before making a purchasing decision. 
  • Approximately 67% of B2B marketers say they used content marketing as a leading strategy in 2023. 
  • The Hormozis spent only $70,000 on content marketing to generate the same quality and amount of leads that would have otherwise cost $2 million monthly on paid ads.
  • Hubspot generates over 24 million monthly website visits, mainly through content marketing.

So if you’re going to be doing it at all, you have to do it well. 

Another important point is that content marketing is only as effective as the effort you put into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to the B2B SEO statistics compiled by Brightedge, content marketing results in 1000x more traffic than social media marketing. SEO does this by helping your content get seen on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). No visibility means no engagement and no leads, which in turn means no sales.

To ensure you’re doing content marketing right, follow these tips:

  • Research your primary keyword with B2B SEO tools and find the right terms or queries that will help your content appear on the result pages.
  • Generate relevant B2B content marketing ideas and topics that will solve readers’ pain points.
  • Create valuable and solution-providing content around these keywords. It is valuable if it addresses your target audiences’ needs and answers their questions.
  • Keep your content simple, succinct, understandable, and actionable. You’re talking to busy business owners and top decision-makers.
  • Use graphics and other media in your content as much as possible. Infographics and the like attract more attention, pass messages easily, and aid retention, all of which boost brand recognition.
  • Distribute your content across all channels including social media and email outlets. Don’t leave everything to SEO.
  • Build backlinks, prioritize content interlinking, and implement other necessary SEO to-dos for better visibility and ranking.
  • Creating a content calendar ensures consistency in publishing useful content. Check out our article on content planning for B2B SaaS brands here.

Email Marketing Channel

Email marketing is more or less a sub-type of content marketing, but you’re primarily focusing on using emails, not websites. And the process involves sending content through email service providers to people who have consented to receive emails from you.

According to the 2023 Square Future of Commerce report, 60% prefer brands to contact them by email, and over 86% want to hear from you frequently—even if reality sometimes seems far from it.

Besides being a preferred channel for most buyers, email marketing helps marketers gain a return of $36 on every $1 well invested. That’s 3500% profit. So, it’s little wonder that 73% of B2Bs use email marketing as part of their leading channels, while another 50% say email marketing is the most impactful channel in their arsenal.

However, like we said, these results are only achievable if you do it right. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

  • Rule one of email marketing is to send emails only to those who consent to receive from you. Doing the opposite will only get your email domain blacklisted after multiple reports from recipients.
  • Send only valuable and relevant content to your end subscribers or potential buyers. They should only receive the type of content they opted in for.
  • Craft attention-grabbing subject lines using power words and numbers. But avoid sale-sy or blacklisted marketing words, as that can land your emails in the promotions tab instead of recipients’ primary inboxes.
  • Avoid words that fall into the categories of urgency, fear, and adult content. They will get your emails into the spam box — the graveyard of all emails.
  • Add clear and concise call-to-actions. “Schedule a call with Aurora now” is better than “Call now.”
  • Use graphics like illustrations and infographics to keep readers engaged.
  • Keep it short and concise. You don’t want to bore your buyers.
  • Don’t sound sale-sy. Be a solution provider, not a feature marketer.

Social Media Marketing Channel

According to Statista, 2024, there are over 5.17 billion social media users as of the time of writing this article. While not all of these are your ideal buyers, this still doesn’t diminish the effectiveness of social media marketing in reaching the remaining small audience that falls within your target circle.

Among the many social platforms out there, Facebook remains the most used by marketers, followed by Instagram. On the other hand, LinkedIn hosts one of the largest numbers of company profiles — about 67 million, most of which are B2Bs, subsidiaries of B2Bs, or newer startups linked in one way or the other.

Social media is exceptionally unique for B2B marketing because you can maximize your presence with both paid ads and organic outreach. For instance, brands like Salesforce engage their millions of LinkedIn followers with organic content while leveraging ads to reach out to more potential buyers.

For maximum marketing effectiveness on social media, do the following:

  • First, find out where your target audience or potential buyers spend most of their time. In the normal context, Facebook and LinkedIn are frequent places where you’ll find B2Bs. But Instagram also houses quite a number of brands like Alibaba, Hoostuite, Adobe, and Mailchimp.
  • Craft a proper social media marketing strategy to ensure consistency, frequency, and proper engagement.
  • Create and share content that resonates with your audience.
  • Roll out polls and surveys to encourage engagement and collect usable feedback.
  • Optimize profile logo, description, cover picture, and other details for social media SEO. This will aid visibility and social ranking.
  • Use a social listening tool to monitor brand mentions and address problems that could arise.
  • Create a support team to handle and respond to queries or comments promptly.
  • Use paid social media ads to boost coverage and connect with target businesses directly.

Other Channels

You can also use influencer marketing, webinar and podcasting, pay-per-click advertising, and video marketing via platforms like YouTube to create awareness and market your product.

Most importantly, there’s no hard-and-fast rule against using as many channels as possible. In fact, combining more than one channel yields more results, and that is called Omnichannel marketing.

However, you need to know which marketing channel works best for your product and target audience. This will help you allocate your resources appropriately and focus on what really matters, especially if you’re operating on a limited budget.

B2B VS B2C: What’s The Difference?

B2B stands for business-to-business, and in marketing, it means selling your product or services to another business. Throughout this article, we’ve mentioned Hubspot and Salesforce. These two big brands provide CRM software to other businesses that need help managing customer relationships and data.

In contrast, B2C means business-to-consumer, and you’re literally selling your product to an individual who is also the end-user or consumer of that product. Perfect examples include McDonald's, Netflix, and the mini t-shirt store next door. These businesses provide their services directly to the consumer.

For clarity, let’s tabulate their major differences below.

Differences Business-to-Business (B2B) Business-to-consumer (B2C)
Target audience Businesses, organizations, and groups. Individuals.
Sales cycle and volume Long sales cycle which could last months or years. Large sales volume. Short sales cycle that usually lasts a few days. Low sales volume.
Decision-making Made by a group of top-level execs within an organization and can include as many as 5-10 persons. Made by the consumer alone.
Driving Force for Purchase Real-time data and facts supporting essential needs and long-term goals. Emotions, relationship-based influences, and immediate needs.
Relationships Long-term relationships to prolong lifetime value and build future opportunities. Short-term relationship that is transaction-based.
Communication Often personal meetings, emails, and phone calls. Usually social media, chatbots, or no communication at all.
Buying process Highly professional and largely formal. Mostly Informal.
Examples Hubspot, Alibaba, Adobe, Mailchimp, Microsoft. Spotify, Netflix, and tech brands like Apple.

Note that a company can be both B2B and B2C. Take Amazon as an example. This is an e-commerce company that sells products directly to consumers (B2C) and provides a marketplace platform for other e-commerce brands to sell their products, too (B2B).

How To Create An Effective B2B Marketing Strategy

A B2B marketing strategy is a documented roadmap that highlights your goals, how you plan to achieve them, the resources you need, and a timeline for executing your plans to scale your business and generate more returns on investment (ROI).

Creating one is not rocket science, and we will show you how below.

Define Target Market And Audience

Your target market is the small and medium-sized businesses, large organizations, and enterprises you want to market to. In this case, you can define it by collecting firmographic data. Firmographic data contains all the information about your ideal brands and helps you tailor your marketing strategy to their overall goals.

Here’s how it should look.

  • Company Niche/Services provided: Healthcare, IT and Security, Customer care, etc.
  • Company Location: North America, South Korea, Nigeria, etc.
  • Annual and Quarterly Revenue: $500,000 - $1M yearly.
  • Company Size/Number Of Employees: Medium-sized business, 1000 - 1500 employees.
  • Current Challenges and Needs.
  • Previous Solutions Used: Product X, Y, and Z.
  • Brand Culture
  • Previous Technology Adoption Records
  • Expected Budget Size

Look at this: Our target market is company X, which specializes in providing cybersecurity services to SMEs and is located in North America. Company X generates over $3M revenue, yearly, and has over 50 employees. Their current challenge is inability to centralize work operations, so they need a centralized SaaS workflow platform. They used Product D last year but opted out due to its lack of scalability and high-end pricing models.

The next thing is your target audience. Remember, you’re not marketing to a business. You’re marketing to the buying group of that business — who are also humans and subject to a lot of emotional bias.

For your target audience, collect demographic data, such as:

  • Age and Gender
  • Location
  • Education level
  • Job title/Role
  • Internet and Purchasing Behaviors
  • Habits
  • Personal Beliefs
  • Preferred Communication Channels And Platforms
  • Professional Groups and Membership Outside Workplace
  • Pain Points and Needs

Summary like this: Alex Sandra, a Senior IT Manager at a mid-sized software company in Seattle, oversees 15 engineers. Her company, with $50 million in annual revenue, is in a growth phase, expanding its product line. Alex, a key decision-maker for tech investments, seeks innovative solutions for operations and cybersecurity. She engages with industry content via webinars and whitepapers, prefers email updates, spends social time on LinkedIn, and is active in professional associations like the Association of Computing Machinery, attending conferences to stay updated on trends.

The results from your target audience and market are the key to creating a buyer persona—a semi-fictional depiction of your ideal customer based on verifiable data and statistics. You can then use this persona to refine your marketing focus and ensure you’re targeting leads who are more likely to convert.

Understand The B2B Buyer’s Journey

We explained the B2B buyer’s journey earlier in this article. But here’s a quick recap.

The B2B buyer’s journey focuses on the stages or touch points your ideal customers will go through before buying your product or subscribing to your services. These stages include Awareness, Consideration, and Decision-making. You can also add the Buying stage.

What’s key here is that you need to identify the challenges your potential buyers are likely to face at each stage and proactively provide appropriate solutions.

For instance, your audience might have difficulties assessing sufficient resources that address their needs at the consideration stage. So, you need to think of ways to distribute your content effectively and reach out to them via multiple channels for enhanced accessibility.

Identify Your Challenges And Set SMART Goals

Everything is not about your ideal customers. You also have challenges that become obstacles to achieving your marketing goals. These can range from insufficient marketing capital and a lack of required expertise or manpower to a minimum presence on critical marketing platforms.

Once you know your challenges, go ahead and set smart goals that correspond with your current or expected capacity. And it has to be SMART.

SMART Goal: Increase Qualified Leads by 20% in Q3 2024

  • Specific: Increase the number of qualified leads by implementing a targeted Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, focusing on mid-sized technology firms in the U.S.
  • Measurable: Track the number of qualified leads generated through CRM and marketing automation tools, aiming for a 20% increase compared to Q2 2024.
  • Achievable: Utilize current resources, including the sales team, for alignment, marketing automation software, and targeted content campaigns to reach potential clients.
  • Relevant: This goal aligns with the company's objective to expand its customer base in the technology sector, ultimately driving revenue growth.
  • Time-bound: Achieve a 20% increase in qualified leads by the end of Q3 2024 (September 30, 2024).

Once a goal is in place, you can start acquiring resources and assigning roles to execute the underlying objectives.

Choose Your Marketing Channels

We’ve also discussed the available marketing channels for B2Bs and how to get the most out of them. As we said, using multiple channels is perfectly okay and recommended since they yield 494% more returns compared to single-channel marketing.

However, you can’t invest the same amount of resources in every channel unless you have uncapped capital and limitless cash flow. If you’re starting with a limited budget, first choose a channel that appeals to your target audience the most.

Of course, content marketing via website articles, case studies, and guides is non-negotiable. That’s your insignia for online presence and can’t be compromised. The same goes for social media marketing.

Once you’ve scaled up or received some funding, you should invest in email marketing for both inbound and outbound outreach. Influencer marketing and Cold calling are also possible if you know how to do them right and avoid getting on your buyers' red radar.

Craft A Compelling Value Proposition

Investopedia beautifully describes “Value Proposition” and calls it your promise to potential buyers or people who need your solutions.

Your customers have an expectation, and they need to know why they should choose you instead of other competitors. A value proposition justifies these concerns by telling them the benefits they get from using your product.

Most importantly, a functional value proposition and B2B performance marketing statement do not preach product features. In contrast, they represent your commitment to helping clients handle their Jobs in a unique, authentic, and achievable approach.

Here’s HubSpot’s effective “Why Us” proposition:

  • It is clear and concise.
  • Shows what difficulties buyers are facing.
  • Proposed solutions.
  • Majored in benefits, not features.

When crafting your value statements, you should implement similar features and add elements that make them readable and worth the time. This includes illustrations, as seen above, shorter sentences, popping contrast, links to statistics and case studies, and a visible call to action.

Finalize Your Strategy

You know your market already, your challenges have been addressed, your goals are well-outlined, and your marketing channels are ready to go. All these, together with the value proposition, make up your unique marketing strategy.

However, there’s no so-called perfect strategy. So you should expect a few lapses here and there as you scale up. Once in a while, you might need to make some minor changes to your strategy, especially as trends come and go.

Also, you should be willing to experiment with different marketing channels, outreach approaches, and unconventional practices, whether new or old. Attend industry-level events and see what other businesses are doing. Read thought-leadership articles to gain a new perspective and see through other leaders' biased lenses.

Then use data from your explorations to improve your existing marketing strategy and build a pathway that works best for you.

B2B Marketing Best Practices

Creating a business marketing strategy is one thing, but knowing how to properly implement it for excellent results is another thing. Check out some of the best practices and tips to help you do the latter below.

Personalize Communication

Personalization means tailoring your marketing communication to each business's needs instead of the usual generic approach where all businesses are treated as one. Interestingly, 83% to 84% of consumers and B2B buyers, respectively, expect you to personalize your communication with them.

Think of this: Companies A and B both need your CRM software. However, that doesn't mean their needs are entirely equal. 

For instance, Company A might have only a thousand customers and is looking for a CRM product with cheaper pricing. On the other hand, Company B might have a million customers and is looking for CRM software that offers scalability for even more explosive growth.

So, your messaging has to focus on cost affordability for Company A while your messaging is personalized to address scalability for Company B, despite marketing the same product.

Utilize Multiple Marketing Channels

Omnichannel marketing means using more than one channel to create awareness and connect with your buyers. This includes combining content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing — the common trio — together. And you can include other ones like influencer marketing or video marketing.

Is it very effective? Yes.

Businesses that use omnichannel marketing record a 494% higher order rate than those that use single marketing channels. But the reason is not far-fetched. You’re simply able to reach more potential buyers and generate more leads. Quality and hot leads equal sales.

Optimize Your Website For Conversions

As a B2B business, your website serves as the first touch point most of the time. So whatever impression it leaves on your visitors is lasting and can influence people’s buying decisions.

Imagine visiting SEMrush or Ahrefs’ website and waiting ten seconds for a page to load. That’s inconsistent with the product they market — SEO tool. The opinion you form from this experience is enough to make you walk away and consider other tools.

Your leads feel the same way.

Also, most conversions happen on your website after a lead has been nudged through your sales and marketing funnel. You will be doing your potential customers a great disservice by putting so many touch points in place from the marketing resource used to checking out or connecting with a sales rep.

To properly optimize your website, work on the loading speed; that’s a priority in all cases. Prioritize website aesthetics, reduce touch points, and place your call-to-action buttons where they are best seen.

Implement Marketing Automation

Marketing automation tools are artificially intelligent tools programmed to handle certain manual tasks, such as scheduling social media posts (Hootsuite), handling workflow approval, managing billing cycles, etc.

Automation is important because it helps you reduce time wasted on repetitive tasks and helps focus on the more complex marketing tasks like crafting personalized emails, writing valuable blog posts, launching paid campaigns, and so on. 

Other benefits include spending less on manpower, reducing human errors, enhancing productivity, and aiding proper allocation of resources.

Attend And Host Industry Events

Networking is a good way to create new business opportunities and build long-term relationships with potential buyers. And one of the fastest approaches to network with industry leaders in your niche is by attending or hosting enterprise-level events.

Reports show that 81% of trade show attendees and business event participants are decision-makers and top influencers within their organizations. Moreover, face-to-face meetings are 34 times more successful than email marketing campaigns.

So, your chances of meeting your next big client at such events are high, and you have more opportunities to strike a good rapport in person before taking the rest online.

Build And Maintain Customer Relationships

In B2B, one transaction is not everything, and you won’t get as many customers per campaign as seen in B2C marketing. Every lead is a treasure, and every customer is an even more important treasure.

To ensure you’re not spending too much on customer acquisition as a result of marketing expenses, you should maintain a good relationship with the ones you already have. Respond as fast as possible to queries and provide a good customer experience.

Annual appreciation calls and occasional customer nurturing emails will go a long way. Don’t just sell, go cold, and then come back when their subscription has almost expired.

Monitor Competitors

No need to reinvent the whole wheel when it comes to B2B marketing. If you do that, you’ll likely spend a lot of time trying and failing till you get a formula that works right. Too bad, B2B is a competitive industry and your competitors won’t wait for you to make a comeback.

Alternatively, figure out what’s working and what’s not for your competitors. You’re literally digging out their cheat code, breaking it down to find loopholes and opportunities that can be exploited, and using it to build or perfect your marketing strategy.

You can also schedule consultation calls with B2B marketing agencies and SEO brands. They will share some of their working strategies and proven tips from years of operation with you. It's simple and much more efficient.

Encourage Customer Referrals, Reviews, And Testimonials

According to the Demand Gen report, 97% of B2B buyers say user-generated content, like reviews on social media platforms, is more effective than other types of content. 

Mike Allton of TheSocialMediaHat perfectly puts it well: “B2B purchases are often complex and involve significant financial investment, so buyers are naturally more cautious and risk-averse. One reason why word of mouth is so effective in B2B marketing is that it helps to build trust and credibility to bypass these barriers.”

To start, ask your existing clients to refer you at any opportunity. Previous and existing clients can also post helpful reviews on user forums, review platforms, and other social media channels. Putting together case studies and testimonials will also help accelerate other buyers' decision-making stages.

Align Sales And Marketing Teams

Most people see sales and marketing teams as silo departments of the same organization. But that’s not true. These two units are interconnected in many ways starting from a buyer’s journey till when a sale is made — and even after.

For instance, sales teams can share data from their interactions with converted leads with the marketing department. This information will help marketing units understand the type of businesses they are reaching out to and their preferences beyond the surface level.

Marketing teams can also make the work of sales teams easier by leaving a good impression on buyers during the awareness stage of their journey. Good messaging, accessible resources, well-spelt benefits instead of features, and personalized outreach all play a role here.

Measure And Analyze Campaign Performance

Analyzing your current campaign performance and benchmarking it against your expected goals will help you determine if the implemented strategy is working or not.

Start by tracking key metrics such as website traffic, unique visitors, time spent on a page, social media followers and engagements, marketing qualified leads (MQL), cost per lead, traffic sources, and referral channels.

Figure out what’s working and build on it for subsequent campaigns. 

B2B Marketing Done Right: Real-World Examples

Let’s see a few B2B businesses that have implemented the steps we discussed and gotten excellent results.

Content Marketing Case Study: Leadpages

Leadpages is a no-code page builder and lead conversion platform that also offers lead management tools for other businesses.

Struggling to gain an edge over big competitors like Hubspot and Infusionsoft, Founder and CEO Clay Collins knew paid ads were not going to pull the results needed. Then he came up with a growth hypothesis, “a content team of four people could outperform an 80+ person sales team at most companies.”

The company created a marketing blog that addresses primary areas of specialization, like B2B lead generation and website conversions. To build authority, Clay Collins also rolled out seven marketing courses, two eBooks, 10 case studies, eight infographics, hosted weekly webinars, and joined ConversionCast’s podcast.

Collin’s hypothesis was right. The company gained over 35,000 high-value leads in just three years, generated over $16 million in revenue in 2015, and became the 148th America’s fastest-growing company in 2016.

Social Media Marketing Case Study: Hubspot

Hubspot is primarily a CRM software provider but offers other secondary services like no-code page-builders and content management systems (CMS). While Hubspot already excels at content marketing with several millions of monthly visits, the brand decided to hit the jackpot with social media marketing as well.

In order to do this, the team in charge employed a not-so-salesy and informal approach. This includes addressing followers and audiences not as businesses or with formal content every time but as individuals and with relatable questions that boost engagement.

Thanks to this strategy and blog content repurposing, HubSpot has grown its follower base to more than 1 million on LinkedIn and 564 thousand on Instagram.

Email Marketing Case Study: STRsoftware

STRsoftware is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provider that competes against many other big players in the market. Instead of increasing the budget for paid advertising, the company decided to take another unconventional approach—gated content.

First, STR developed a unique content marketing strategy and created a topic-specific content hub named BI Publisher University. Then, it gated each piece of content on this page by asking readers to submit a few details, including emails, before accessing the hub. 

For maximum effectiveness, STR promoted the BI Publisher University all over its websites to increase visibility. The company also implemented Pardot’s email autoresponder to confirm and double-confirm opt-in for marketing-related emails.

As a result of this approach, STRsoftware gained high-quality leads for inbound marketing and recorded a 10% increase in form conversion rate. Their website also saw a 54% increase in traffic and a 67% increase in pageviews.

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B2B Marketing Trends To Watch Out For In 2024

The B2B market is always evolving to meet demands that arise as a result of technological advancements and dynamic business needs. To ensure you’re at the top of your game, keep these trends in your to-do:

Virtual and Augmented Reality

The VR and AR market is currently valued at $40.4bn and is projected to reach $62bn by the end of 2029. Over 1.1 billion people already use augmented reality devices, and this figure is likely to hit 1.73 billion by the end of 2024.

With the rapid adoption of these intuitive techs, B2B marketers can also reap some benefits, like using VR to walk potential buyers through software demos or augmented reality to streamline the onboarding process.

Sustainable and Ethical Marketing Practices

73% of B2B buyers will pay more for products and services offered by companies that have a strong purpose, especially when it comes to sustainability. Moreover, there’s a growing call for greener acts and policy implementations.

This can be a competitive advantage in cases where the majority of your target audience are advocates for sustainability and ethical online marketing processes.

Conversational Marketing With Chatbots

Conversational marketing with chatbots is gradually gaining more ground, thanks to the advent of smarter AI systems through firms like OpenAI. A report from Deloitte shows that smart chatbots reduce query-handling time by 77%, and other research proved that these AI assistants saved businesses over 2.5+ billion combined time in 2023.

That’s in line with what most millennials want — a fast response time for minor queries and intelligent redirection to human resources for complex queries.

Influencer Partnerships in B2B

B2B influencer generates over 520% returns for every campaign launched. We’re talking about $5.2 ROI on a $1 investment, almost double of email returns. Of course, this value is not definite and fully depends on how well you do it.

Network and negotiate with influential B2B influencers in your industry through platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Enhanced Customer Experience (CX) Focus

Customer experience is the new B2B SEO trend. If leads enjoy their time on the first visit, there’s a likely possibility they will come back. This also reduces the bounce rate on your website and increases dwell time — indirect signals to search engines that your website is relevant. 

85% of B2B buyers say the experience a company provides is as essential as its product, whereas another 75% say they expect a response to their queries within 30 minutes. 53% of customers say good customer experience impacts their loyalty to the business.

So, work on areas that improve customer experience, such as ease of use and navigability on your website, fast response time, occasional check-ups on your existing buyers, and provisions for self-service options.

Stay Ahead In B2B Marketing With TripleDart

Pheww! B2B marketing is a lot of work, right?

We understand you, and that’s why we want to help you handle everything while you focus on other operational tasks within your organization.

At TripleDart, we have tested dozens of strategies and worked with hundreds of B2B companies to scale their ROI. So, we know what works and what doesn’t. Our results speak for themselves.

If you’re ready to rocket your revenue with a boost in high-value leads, give us a hit below.

Shiyam Sunder
Shiyam Sunder
Shiyam is a Demand Generation marketer and Growth Advisor with a passion for numbers and scientific methods. As the Founder of TripleDart, he specializes in building scalable demand generation programs for SaaS businesses. With over 9 years of experience in B2B SaaS, Shiyam has a proven track record of helping more than 50 SaaS companies optimize their customer acquisition models, develop demand generation playbooks, and drive growth.

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