The greatest issue marketers are faced with today is that consumers are becoming ‘immune’ to advertising which means that the craft of selling a product or a service is undergoing a serious change. Companies are forced to either evolve or cease to bring profit. Internet culture basically dictates what is cool enough to be purchased and what is a waste of money and, more importantly, time.
According to the Global Ad-Blocking Behavior Report by GlobalWebIndex, 47% of internet users have an ad blocker of some kind: they want to shield themselves from boring, predictable, and useless advertising. Potential clients want to engage with the business before they actually make a purchase. Experiencing a connection to the brand’s identity is crucial, and that is when B2B content marketing comes into play. Brands thrive off implementing B2B marketing strategies because they attract and delight any audience not only in the course of making a purchase or engaging a service but also before and after these processes.
If all of this sounds a little confusing, you may want to reach out to a consulting B2B firm that will break down the many benefits of B2B marketing for your business in particular. We at Elevated Third are dedicated to finding the right B2B marketing solution that will help you build your brand and realize your business potential to the fullest! In this article, we aim to introduce B2B marketing as a tool and share the latest trends to quite likely transform your existing business model into something brand-new and exciting.
First Things First: What is B2B Marketing?
In case you are completely unfamiliar with the term, B2B stands for business-to-business marketing and refers to the notion of promoting a product or a service to another organization or business. The opposite of that would be B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, whose main target is the client themselves. To put this into perspective and show you the difference between the two in a nutshell, think of B2B marketing as the more profound purchase journey and B2C as the relatively quicker and simpler one.
Nowadays, there seems to be a clear understanding of the huge importance of high-quality branding and content. B2B marketing dives even deeper than that. It masterfully thrives off the fact that the majority of potential buyers usually research companies for days, weeks, even months, and sometimes years before making the final decision to buy a product or sign up for a service.
The tricky part is that calculating the ROI on a project may sometimes be an uphill struggle for this exact reason. Each morsel of content and the minuscule marketing strategy is quietly doing its thing in the backdrop, and it might take a year or forever to find out! The B2B strategy strikes a chord with the idea of the interconnectivity of things because, let’s say, someone who may have remembered your awesome presentation at some conference years ago can fill in the contract today and cooperate with your team, you just never know.
How Do I Build My Brand With B2B Marketing?
Becoming successful with a business-to-business marketing model doesn’t only mean providing unmatched content but, first of all, analyzing and understanding your audience: what content they like and how exactly they want to consume it. In order to do so, you should initially come to terms with the fact that B2B content marketing will probably entail a winding and complex purchase funnel but bring forth incredible long-term benefits for your business.
Now you can steadily move to the second step: developing a solid B2B marketing strategy. Without a strategy, there is no point in entering cut-throat competition in any market or industry. Just like Benjamin Franklin said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” and we stand by this quote. We want to help you prosper, so here are some points you should definitely include in your strategy-building process:
- Select a clear business objective first, and churn out ads second. In order to create an impact, you must have a vision and establish a precise framework for your B2B marketing strategy;
- Outline your market and audience. While B2C marketing, which we mentioned earlier in the article, has a wider audience, B2B marketing aims at a more particular group of clients. In that respect, B2B marketing narrows down the focus and kind makes it kind of easier to interact with the audience. Quite logical, isn’t it? The more meticulously you define your audience, the better you can interact with the said audience and provide them with accurate and relevant messaging.
- Outline B2B marketing channels. After narrowing down your audience, ask yourself these questions:
- Which social media platforms do my potential customers prefer?
- What questions are they asking search engines?
- Do they attend industry events? If yes, which ones?
- How can I bridge the gap my competitors leave open?
- Put it all in motion: create assets and run campaigns.
- Always measure your success and failures and improve!
What B2B Marketing Trends Should I Be Aware Of In 2023?
- Customization is the magic formula. If you don’t understand your audience, have no clue how they behave online or offline, and have a vague understanding of what is trending across social media platforms, what are you even doing? That is key to being able to deliver the right experience to your potential client and make them choose you over and over. Users want everything to be tailored specifically to them: never underestimate the power of personalization. In 2023 you gotta make sure all and every touchpoint and communication channel are covered, be it emails, social media, chatbots, or webpages.
- Make use of the global attention span decline – consider video marketing! Videos have proved to be a highly effective form of communication and a great field for marketing strategies. Studies show that internet users spend about 8 seconds reading texts. However, just a 30-second video gets their attention for a whopping 20 minutes. Let that sink in.
- Podcasts – the new black? The emergence of the podcast industry is a recent thing, but it has already become a great channel for B2B marketing. Podcasts allow businesses to demonstrate their products and services while also sharing thoughts, and people absolutely love that. It feels very personal and trustworthy.
- Make the most of AI. Yes, artificial intelligence is already being employed across the board, and it is still a developing technology that has not even reached its full potential. In 2023 the reward for implementing AI is even higher: we’re talking about improved efficiency, increased productivity, and boosted brand awareness.
The world is changing, and if you want to stay afloat and thrive, you have to change with it! B2B marketing provides awesome opportunities for businesses to develop and showcase their vision to others, making everybody feel appreciated and seen.
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