Marketing is ever evolving and so are marketing tactics. What is innovative and on trend today might feel so 2020 very quickly. But what stays constant are the b2b marketing challenges, goals and objectives. Growing website traffic and generating qualified leads has always been a challenge for B2B sales and marketing teams, no matter if you asked them today or 5 years from now. Teams will always be worried about how they can better engage with customers, increase revenue and grow their business.
Staying on top of what your buyer’s look for and want, current marketing trends, hiring a marketing consultant are some of the ways companies with marketing problems attempt to tackle the same. While covering every marketing tactic may not be possible in this post, let’s look at some of the top ones that you can focus on in 2021 and beyond.
Marketing Tactic # 1 -Digital First mindset
With the state of how things continue to be in our world today, with no one really knowing when in-person events will come back, businesses have continued to stay in virtual and remote mode for the most part. B2B marketing that often relied on traditional methods of sales calls and relationship building, have had no choice but to move to digital for customer acquisition and retention marketing. In 2020, 84% of marketers placed increased value on digital experiences. Some ideas that you can include in your overall marketing strategy if you haven’t already are - creating ecommerce technology related podcasts, blogging more often with relevant content that educates and informs your buyers and customers, hosting webinars on topics your clients will find useful today and tomorrow, and finally, paying attention to your website to ensure that it's doing its job of educating your customers while helping you in your lead generation and conversion efforts.
Marketing Tactic # 2 -Personalized and Relevant Content Marketing
Content marketing has been around for a while and if you have already been creating content to reach and inform your customer, the next question to ask yourself is - is it personalized and relevant to your buyer’s current and future needs? 68% marketers feel that giving more information generally helps buyers make better decisions. But more information and content isn’t necessarily always the right answer. Relevant content, one that individual stakeholders on a buying team find useful at various stages of their journey is important. What kind of obstacles do your buyers face at awareness, consideration and decision stages?
Marketing Tactic # 3 - Digital Videos
Including digital videos in your overall B2B marketing strategy is important. Video content consumption is up. In fact at the height of pandemic in 2020, 80% of marketers added videos to their non-paid marketing strategy
Consider some more video marketing stats -
32% businesses use video for sales
89% of video marketers say video gives them good ROI
52% marketers think it helps them build trust
Ecommerce technology buyers face several dilemmas while considering platforms such as - Should they build one or buy? Which platform solution fits their needs? Which will be easier to implement? They need help sorting through all the information they have on the subject which can be very confusing, even for sophisticated prospects. Videos explaining your product, its benefits, customer case studies showing how it helped another brand are some examples of what you can create useful videos on.
Marketing Tactic # 4 - Effective Long Form Content
Long form content providing high value information to your buyers is an important content marketing tactic in 2021. It gets 77.2% more links than short form articles. And you know what that means - better search engine visibility resulting in more traffic. If you have been only writing shorter articles (500-800 words), consider adding longer posts to your blog, at least 1200 words and over. Keep the context in mind always. Besides earning quality backlinks , if your intent is to educate your buyers , long form content will help you do that. For example - you won’t need long form content if you were sharing marketing statistics in a newsletter but you would if you were intending on delving deeper into a particular topic such as sharing several marketing strategies and tactics as I am doing here in this blog post.
Some examples of educational long form content include -
eBooks
longer blog posts
resource lists
pillar pages
customer case studies
What should you write about? Involve sales in your long form content creation process. Close to 90% of teams that align their content marketing initiatives with sales report an increase in leads and conversion. Your sales team is in front of your buyers fielding objections, addressing concerns and guiding them through their pain points every day. Producing sales enablement content on such topics will add high value for both your sales team as well as your buyers.
Marketing Tactic # 5 - Content Optimization
While you are creating more personalized content, optimizing it is even more critical. Creating Seo friendly content pieces such as posts for your blog is key in order for them to rank well on Google and be discovered by your prospects.
Inclusion of primary keywords in your title and blog post body
Adding descriptive and compelling meta descriptions
Adding relevant meta tags
Improving readability score
Sprinkling in relevant internal as well as external links
Is your content being produced keeping your buyer’s intent in mind? Are they in the correct format Google’s serving up the first page results in? For example Shopping cart abandonment is one of the key problems your ecommerce tech offering solves, you have published an article, is it written in a list form as shown in the featured snippet?
Marketing Tactic # 6- ABM
ABM or account based marketing is a business strategy that employs a combined effort of both B2B sales and marketing teams in generating business from fewer high value accounts rather than casting a wide net. This targeted and sales and marketing team aligned approach results in better qualified leads, higher buyer engagement, increased conversions and a higher ROI. Consider the following statistics -
91% of companies using ABM increase their average deal size with 25% reporting and increase
62% of marketers say they can measure a positive impact since adopting ABM
208% increase in revenue witnessed by companies that adopted ABM
Marketing Tactic # 7 - Email marketing
Email marketing still not part of your digital marketing strategy? Consider the following b2b email marketing stats -
Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, the first being industry thought leaders followed by referrals by colleagues
59% of marketers say that email is most effective channel in terms of revenue generation
Email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is 4200% ROI
So if you thought email marketing was a waste of time and money, think again. Email marketing is a tried and tested way of reaching and engaging with your prospects, current and returning customers.
Sending out effective emails, one that will help your buyer see how buying and implementing your headless ecommerce platform will affect their ROI and help them succeed in their business, sales and marketing goals is critical for email marketing to work for your business.
For email marketing to produce results, follow best practices such as -
Customer segmentation to reach the right audience
Write catchy headlines so customers are persuaded to click and open
Making them mobile responsive as clients maybe on the go
Use B2B email marketing software such as to segment, send and measure -
Hubspot
Constant Contact
Drip
Mailchimp
Marketing Tactic # 8 - Conversational marketing
Buying an ecommerce technology solution is not easy for an enterprise. While it's true that today’s buyer researches on their own and has all the information they need and don’t really get into conversations with sales reps until later , still the process can be overwhelming. During various stages of the customer journey, buyers may have pressing questions (they may not be ready for a full sales conversation or product demo yet) and like B2C, they may be looking for answers immediately, this is where conversational marketing tools can help.
Live chat options such as chatbots on your website, whatsapp, facebook messenger etc. are some great options to engage with your customers on their terms, build relationships, streamline your sales process, shorten the buying cycle and provide a superior buying experience to your prospects and current customers.
Including the right marketing tactics in your marketing plan is critical to your success. Which would you employ today? Share in comments section.
