Not getting what you want from your B2B marketing campaign?
There are many trends in B2B sales for 2016, such as buy Instagram likes, but the issue with trends is that they don’t tend to last long. B2B organizations that survive the first year have the fundamentals down. They know how to improve their campaigns regardless of the trends.
This guide is going to show you some of the fundamental ways you can improve your B2B marketing campaign from the foundations.
Lead Surveying Works
To completely optimize your marketing strategy and promote your services on the Internet you need to get feedback from the people you are targeting. Without targeted feedback from customers, you are guessing at what people want.
There are many ways to gain detailed feedback from customers. You can begin by issuing surveys, whether this is in the real world or via email. You can also just ask some simple questions via your email funnel. As long as a suitable number of people respond, you can gain a snapshot of what your target audience thinks of your marketing campaign.
This information is priceless.
Improve Your Funnel With Content
The vast majority of sales funnels can be improved with the help of content marketing, via public content and email marketing. It’s a part of marketing that not everyone completely understands. It can bring in more leads because it acts as a hook that encourages potential leads to keep coming back.
It can also achieve specific goals. For example, if you find that people consistently don’t understand your product you can use content to educate them, so when you head into direct contact with your prospects you won’t have to clear up this confusion.
Use Video Marketing for Educating
Visual content is the best way to educate your target audience because this is content that communicates a larger number of words than written content. It’s also suitable for a population that is consistently browsing via mobile devices. A lot of people won’t view a piece of written content because they don’t have time to read it all the way through.
The statistics say that users will increase the amount of time they spend on a website by 88% with a video, whereas without a video they are more likely to leave.
Treat B2B Customers Like Real People
Just because you are trying to sell to a business doesn’t mean that the people behind the business are somehow different. Cater to their real human needs. Why would you think that a CEO wouldn’t be spending as much time on their smartphone as an ordinary member of the general public?
One of the biggest mistakes B2B businesses make is they suddenly pretend that they are no longer speaking to a real human being. And this is when people switch off. They feel as if they are connecting with a corporate robot. Keep the tone casual and cater your marketing campaign to people, not businesses.
An emotional connection with customers will vastly increase your chances of converting a potential lead into a paying customer.
Blending Your Marketing Strategies
Effective B2B marketing is never about one or two strategies. It’s a combination of different techniques. In many ways, it’s like cooking. You need the right ingredients in the right ratios or everything is going to come out bad.
Take a step back and consider where you are spending your time and money. If you are leaning too heavily towards a specific area, you may need to think about making some adjustments. For example, half of all corporate accounts on social media are inactive. It’s a sign that the marketing blend isn’t right.
Dig Deeper
Broad targeting is common within the B2B marketing sector. It comes about due to fear. Many people are scared that they are going to alienate a certain demographic, and so they go wide. By doing this you are selling to everyone at once, and this is going to reduce the effectiveness of your campaign.
It’s always better to opt for laser targeting, even if it means you have to run multiple parallel marketing campaigns.
Catering to your audience and then segmenting that audience will lead to far better results in the long-term.
Last Word – Testing is Everything
At face value, these principles are going to help, but they require testing in order to optimize. Entering a constant state of split testing will ensure that the various arms of your marketing campaign remain sharp. Things change all the time and only by constantly testing is your business going to avoid lagging behind.
How will you enhance your B2B marketing campaign today?
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.