If your B2B marketing strategy just isn’t as effective as you’d like it to be in terms of producing new leads and new sales, here are three proven ways for giving it a quick turbo-charge:
#1: Embrace A/B testing for your emails
Let’s start from the top – since email marketing is the fundamental cornerstone of any B2B marketing strategy, it’s important that your email marketing is up to the task. If you’re not doing A/B testing on your emails, you need to start now. Simply stated, this is the art of taking two items and comparing them head-to-head to check for performance. The better one wins.
Say, for example, you’re sending out emails only in the morning – you know, to hit the key decision-makers as soon as they arrive at the office. Try sending them out at night to see how that changes things – they might actually be more receptive to emails that reach them during non-working hours, like at night or on weekends. And it’s not just timing that you can A/B test. You can also A/B test subject headlines, for example. The rule of thumb is that subject headlines less than 10 characters work most effectively, and that the optimal headlines are between 10 and 30 characters. So shorten or lengthen as needed.
#2: Find new ways to integrate the sales and marketing teams
It’s too easy to think of B2B marketing in terms of only a single silo. But the reality is that marketing does not exist by itself – it also feeds into B2B sales. Sales and marketing are inseparable. And it’s not just that they’re interconnected –there’s a feedback loop, as B2B sales feed back into B2B marketing. The key to making this a virtuous feedback loop is integrating the sales and marketing teams.
There are several ways to do this – invite members of the B2B sales team to sit in on meetings, for example. You’d be surprised at what kinds of insights they are able to deliver. They can tell you which marketing messages are actually resonating with prospects. They can tell you which products are popular, and which are not. They can tell you which products require call after call to answer questions, and which ones don’t require any follow-up at all.
#3: Borrow a page from the B2C marketing playbook
Yes, that’s right – the same tactics and strategies that work for B2C marketing can also work for B2B marketing. Two big areas to explore here are social media and mobile, which are both seeing an explosion of popularity in the B2C marketing space.
You absolutely need to be thinking of ways to tap into mobile. People are reading your emails on their mobile devices, they are reading your e-books and whitepapers on their mobile devices. So you have to make them easy to read on mobile. Think of how they are going to look on a tiny screen. Nobody is going to squint to read the tiny fonts on your very detailed whitepaper.
The same advice goes for social media. Think beyond just LinkedIn. Think about Facebook and now Instagram. They’re both the two most rapidly growing social platforms, and for a reason. Your clients, customers and prospects are using them, why aren’t you?
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With these 3 tips, you’ll be ready and able to turbo-charge your B2B marketing efforts!
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.