What is B2B?
Business-to-Business is the most simple way to define it. Basically, companies that create products or services that another business can benefit from. For example, B2B marketing firms and business supply companies.
Ideally, B2B companies help support other businesses to grow and operate. By doing consultations, creating products and efficient processes.
A great example of this would be ADP. ADP is used widely by companies for payroll and financial services. Another example would be Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud-based storage copmany that provides business services and induvidual services. Both of these businesses provide services solutions for lots of businesses.
Think about your car. Everything on your car for the most part is manufactured by a different company than your actual make/model of your car. For example, when you get your car serviced or tires changed, they aren’t putting the exact car model tires on your car, they are using another businesses tire to place on your car, based on a efficient business relationship, that started out as a B2B marketing plan.
How to Build a B2B Marketing Plan
Research & Set Goals
Researching allows you the ability to understand the problem that needs to be resolved within the business. By conducting research first, your business can begin to plan a strategy. Look into their social media, website analytics, and sales reports, if possible. Knowing this type of information can help with tailoring a successful B2B marketing plan.
Determine the goals that you look to achieve for the business you are marketing to. These goals will help narrow down what is most important for the company, while also helping you narrow down your plan. It will help assess risks and problem areas, that your business can help resolve. It also helps establish a clear B2B marketing plan.
Discover the Buyer Persona
Eventhough you may be marketing to a business, within that potential business you still can create your marketing strategy around these personas. This will help tailor your messaging. By establishing the buyer persona you are able to discover what is most important. For example, with a buyer person you can help answer these few questions:
- What is my targeted audience? What is the most important information they need?
- What problem can I provide a solution for the business?
- What are some success factors that this particular area of the business is looking for?
- What are some contributing factors that might prevent them from making a decision to use my company?
These are only a few, but with research and analytics, answering these questions will help prevent barriers from a business from working with your company.
Clear Messaging
Your business also needs to convey over a clear message to the other business regarding the ROI. This is not the time to market over your brand and brand image. Instead, you should be marketing how your business can attribute to the success of the potential businesses processes and services.
Think Organic: Organic Plan Equals Organic Traffic
Unlike B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, you aren’t catering to your consumers needs or desires. Your business has to convince another business to invest in a product, or service that you can provide for them. They are looking to see if your business can increase their sales or revenue, or traffic to their websites. Essentially, the business you market to should see an ROI form what your are providing to them.
Have a Knowledgeable Sales Team
This is crucial. For digital marketing, businesses typically will not see rapid results to convince a business to use those digital marketing services. However, with a knowledgeable sales team that is great at building effective relationships, then the business would be open to using your services.
User Experience & Content Delivery
Think about how you would want the customers of the business you are marketing to, to interact with the content. For example, if you run a digital content/marketing business, and your looking to market to a company that gains client via their website, how do you plan the best user experience for that company’s clientele? Based on your prior research, what kind of content drives their clients’ to choose them for business? How do you need to write the content to help the business land sales?
Content delivery is important when it comes to B2B marketing. How you manage and organize a businesses content is vital. Content delivery is a big part of B2B marketing. In your marketing strategy you need to provide the business with a solid content plan.
It’s 2020, and everything digital is driven by content. Here are some types of content to think about:
- Text
- Graphics
- Videos
If you are able to tackle these in your B2B marketing plan for a business, you already have an upper hand with achieving the goals you set for the business.
Here are a few key things your business should provide before you start B2B Marketing:
- Efficiency
- Streamline Solutions
- Increasing website or blog traffic
- Boost conversion rates
- Profitability as a result from using your services
Ideally, what can your business provide to help streamline processes, increase productivity, and profitability, within a business. This is the very essence of B2B marketing.
Culture Snob Media 