Wander bloom

Let’s dive into B2B marketing together! I want to gain more knowledge about this topic so what would be a better way to do it, then writing about it?! I have mentioned my interest in media before, check out my first post here. To be clear I’m totally new to this topic, so I’m figuring out a lot myself right now. If you are a new also, then it’s perfect as we share the same perspectives. If you happen to be a person knowing a lot then I hope you still find something from the post. Get your cup of coffee and let’s get into it!!

What is B2B marketing?

It’s a business-to-business marketing of products or services to other businesses or organisations. To comparison, B2C has focus on marketing to the customer. B2C goes from toothpaste to shirts, more like items for individual person. (This I already knew, whoopwhoop)

B2B marketing often is more straightforward, informational, includes smaller pool of customers. This is because businesses make buying decisions based on how it will affect their profits and return on investment (ROI). B2C customers don’t think about ROI or anything similar, so their marketing is more emotional, or persuasive.

B2B is made for any company that sells to other companies. The marketing campaigns are aimed for anyone who has control over on purchasing decisions. It can include a lot of people from entry-level to end-users or to up to high level individuals.

As we know, getting people’s attention is hard in this oversaturated market. Marketing strategies need thoughtful planning, execution, and management. I’m going to go over some steps for it.

Recommended steps are first develop a a VISION. In marketing, setting clear goals and understanding the reason behind steps is crucial to have a successful campaign. Then to DEFINE THE MARKET and BUYER PERSONA, it’s necessary to understand who is the person you are communicating the message. Next important step is to understand where you intend to REACH them. There’s few questions to help to find answers:

• Where do they spend their time online?
• What questions are they asking from search engines?
• Which social media networks do they prefer?
• How can you fill opportunity gaps that your competitors are leaving?
• What industry events do they attend?

Since I liked these questions and steps, I want to mention I got them from this article, so check that out also!

Next step is about RUNNING THE CAMPAIGNS, which means having creative approach, insights, strong call to action, thought leadership, value, personalisation, emotional hooks, etc. After that measuring and improving campaigns is the key. This helps to understand what works good and what is not working that good and why. So, to use resources wisely and put it into something that creates value.

Here’s a little checklist for making sure that you have a strong campaign:

ASPECT	WHAT TO ASK YOURSELF
Insight	Do I understand my buyer’s pain points?
Messaging	Is it simple, benefit-led, and human?
Creative	Does it stand out visually and emotionally?
CTA	Is my call-to-action aligned with the funnel stage?
Value	Am I educating and helping before I sell?
Personalisation	Am I talking to the right people with relevant content?
Proof	Do I provide credible case studies, stats, or demos?
Integration	Are all channels and formats reinforcing each other?

Content formats

One of the widely used content format is BLOGGING. Regularly updating blogs helps to get organic visibility and drive traffic to the site because of the usage of AI and SEO, the blogs are noticed better than podcast for example. The blog can consist of different kind of topics and formats. (Blogging is something, where I’m trying to get better, understand how it’s working and how to get it to work better, so you could see the process of that in my blog:))

Others are:

SEO– Effective SEO breaks up text into clear and readable structure, incorporating relevant keywords naturally, and provides helpful content for the search intent. (I have heard from a podcast that Economist has very good and SEO friendly captions. They do it so catchy and relevant that these are good examples.)

SOCIAL MEDIA– Helps to find new buyers and networking. Behind every company there’s people who could be engaged, related to through social media. LinkedIn is one of the most popular ones in B2B.

WHITEPAPERS, EBOOKS, and INFOGRAPHICS– These can provide users contact information which enables to have further contact. Often as a B2B lead generation tool.

EMAIL– I’m not personally fan of getting emails from loads of different companies and like to bin them a lot. But it’s said it works so needs to be considered.

VIDEO– It’s the driving force behind many successful B2B strategies. I have an example of a video campaign more further in the blog!

LIVESTREAM EVENTS and WEBINARS– It works really well on LinkedIn. It’s good to show expertise, showcasing innovation or giving LinkedIn members behind-the-scenes view showcasing company’s culture.

CASE STUDIES and CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS– This can help to establish credibility, which is important for the B2B marketing.

PODCASTS– According to my source this is gaining a lot of popularity since founders and business owners listen to it so much. Personally, I’m curious how to make B2B podcast interesting enough to listen so it wouldn’t be too boring. Would like to look into it more!!

Some other aspects to consider

Be human

This!! I have heard a lot! While only being on social media and student in the media field, I’m already hearing the importance of this. It makes sense also! Since people are moved by emotions that’s how it should be approached. Especially when the contest for getting attention is getting higher, you need to speak with people in a way that is engaging. Especially, in B2B, yess you are trying to get a company as your customer but you aren’t marketing to a building or something emotionless.

Target precision and volume in mind

Most B2B buying decisions are influenced by multiple stakeholders. In B2B there’s no solo decision maker as a target person. It’s important to target all the stakeholders who can potentially influence the buying decision. B2B buying cycles are complex and can constantly change jobs and roles. This is the reason why brand recognition matters. Need to reach professionals who can both influence and authorise the buying decision.

Where to find professional audiences?

• Ad targeting- Reach professional audiences with Ad targeting.

• Lookalike targeting- Find professionals on LinkedIn who look, act, and behave like your top customers with Lookalike Targeting.

• Audience Expansion- Find similar professionals who might be interested in your offerings using audience expansion.

• Matched audiences- Find the exact audiences to match your target list with matched audiences.

• Audience Network- Serve ads beyond LinkedIn via the LinkedIn audience network.

These steps are going to be another blog post soon, to dive more into these bullet points! Stay tuned!!

Thought leadership

The more I read different blogs about B2B marketing, the more I saw two words “thought leadership”. I haven’t learned about it before so I curious to see it mentioned so many times. I have learned the importance of it now!

Research shows that senior-level decision makers value thought leadership content. Most read it for an hour in a week. B2B decision makers will pay more if they know company has used thought leadership to establish clear vision for future.

I think I could do another deep dive into it in a separate blog.

Using LinkedIn

As I mentioned earlier, there has been significant increase in using LinkedIn for B2B marketing for organic content. TikTok being the least used platform!! LinkedIn also offers loads of strategic opportunities and ways to use it. I need to do another post about it!! again, I have so many post plans, crazy…

Another article I read was about…

how to use customer journey to improve marketing?

The buying process includes awareness, consideration, decision and retention. As well, this way you can create more brand loyalty.

Each stage explained with some recent examples (I personally looove to see what others are doing or learn from examples):

Awareness: The buyer realises they have a problem. They start searching the internet for the solution. So the marketer should increase awareness with SEO, content marketing (TOFU), and paid.

One of the recent examples for that is Airwallex campaign. You can check the videos here. It focuses on old and dated ways to do business. In the videos it’s symbolised by crashing those items. This brings up Airwallex that offers better, faster solutions for doing business. It’s short, catchy and well-thought through. This grabs attention, educates and reaches business leaders! Love it.

Consideration: The buyer finds your solution and they compare it with the competitors. As a marketer you need to help them consider the solution with content marketing (BOFU) and B2B email marketing.

HubSpot transformed annual “State of Sales” into interactive site which included dynamic infographics, role- and industry-specific content segments, personalised ROI calculations. They paired this site with email drip campaigns, live webinars featuring sales leaders, and retargeting ads offering free CRM demos and useful templates. It’s a perfect example for this stage as it’s highly relevant, targeted content, interactive tools for engagement, and smoothly going into sales. I got my information from this blog.

Decision: The buyer chooses a solution and becomes a customer. Marketers should help them decide with excellent product marketing and BOFU content.

Adobe’s “Experience Makers” campaign aimed at decision-makers, Adobe offered webinars, research reports and personalised content. The result was over 500 000 webinar attendees worldwide and 15% lift in digital marketing revenues. Also, they do The Adobe Experience awards each year, giving out awards for the people who use Adobe Creative Cloud. You can see that here. This campaign works because it educates, gives deeper insights and option for get noticed (engaging).

Retention: The customer starts relationship with the company and if the experience is good, they will refer it to others. As marketers, you need to do regular surveys, invest in product development and continue product marketing.

Example of that is Strongwell, they did educational drip campaign, implementing CRM and targeted emails. This worked a lot for them and boosted the business. It worked because drip campaigns nurture, qualify, and convert existing leads without being pushy.

I used some short terms like TOFU, BOFU and also not sure about drip campaigns…another post coming I guess.

Well, this was my intro to the B2B marketing world. A bit or a lot of mess with words and strategies! But we are getting there. At least now, I have the basics straight. Soo, I can only go further from now!

Let me know if you have any experience in B2B marketing or what do you think of a post with this kind of approach????