In this blog, we will discuss some of the best digital marketing opportunities you can take to grow your B2B business, how to effectively act upon those strategies, and how to make sure money is being made!

Understanding B2B Digital Marketing

In its essence, B2B marketing is defined as the strategies and tactics employed to promote and sell products or services from one business to another in an online environment. It involves utilizing various online channels and platforms to connect with other companies, build relationships, and drive sales.

When you begin to focus on a new digital marketing strategy, there are a few things you need to define that will help guide your overall strategy development. You should ask yourself the following questions:

Target Audience

Who is your primary target audience? Furthermore, who will be the decision-makers within an organization deciding to purchase your product or service?

This will differ from a business-to-consumer (B2C) campaign that focuses more on specific consumer demographics. In contrast, a B2B campaign targeting should focus more on the industries, job seniority, or job titles that would use your product or service. If you are selling a software product, who is most likely to use it or make that decision? Is it an IT Director, a Marketing Manager, or a Sales person?

Conversions & Leads

How do you receive leads? What is the most crucial conversion point? Should you offer free trials, free quotes, or a demo of your product? How much revenue, on average, do you get from a lead or conversion?

In a B2C world, consumers can just return a product if unsatisfied. With a product or service in a B2B world, your audience will be more open-minded to see similar products or services from other companies, so being as flexible as possible with how you develop your leads is critical.

In addition, having a defined revenue number of what a lead means can help with your analysis of the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Website Structure

Is your website set up to connect effectively with your audience? Is your website professional and clean? Can a user easily navigate the site? Is your product or service defined effectively?

An effective website for a B2B company should serve as a gateway to current and future customers, highlighting priority services and products, key selling points, company information, and more. It should transcend the role of a static online brochure, evolving into a dynamic space that effectively communicates a business’s brand identity and value proposition. This digital presence is a crucial touchpoint in the customer journey, facilitating lead generation, providing valuable insights, and fostering meaningful interactions.

Brand Positioning

How is your brand positioned in the digital space? Does your brand have specific guidelines? Does your brand have a positive outlook? What separates your brand from the competition?

A well-defined and consistently communicated brand image establishes a strong foundation for a business’s success. It goes beyond mere visual aesthetics; it encapsulates the brand’s essence, conveying its values, personality, and unique selling propositions.

When a brand projects a consistent image and position, it fosters trust and familiarity among its target audience, driving customer loyalty and differentiation in a crowded market. From social media interactions to website design, it’s vital to reflect similar design aesthetics, values, and messaging across various channels. By maintaining this cohesive presence, a business contributes to the creation of a robust brand positioning strategy that resonates with consumers, leaving a lasting and positive impression.

Once those questions are answered and understood, you can begin crafting your strategy to reach your target audience and generate qualified leads.

Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy for a B2B Product or Service

Crafting a well-thought-out strategy is the cornerstone of B2B marketing success, serving as the compass that guides us through the dynamic landscape of the digital realm.

It should start with a specific goal, which should be tied to the conversions driving revenue to your business. Consider setting a SMART goal, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Once a goal is set, you can develop tactics from specific channels to reach your goal. Your tactics should focus on providing the most impact to reach your goal.

For example, your SMART goal could be to increase ‘Demo Leads’ by 50% year-over-year. To achieve this, you could use the tactics of LinkedIn Ads, Authoritative Content Development, Search Engine Optimization, and Email Marketing to specifically target your defined audience.

Now, let’s dive into these tactics and how they can be effectively used in a B2B Digital Marketing Strategy.

Understanding Key Digital Marketing Channels

Paid Media

In a B2B digital marketing strategy, paid media refers to the promotional efforts that involve paying for advertising space or placement on various online channels to reach and engage other businesses. This includes platforms such as search engines, social media, industry-specific websites, and display advertising networks. The effectiveness of paid media campaigns is often measured through key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversions, and return on investment (ROI), being the most important.

There are a variety of different paid media outlets you can utilize, and the big question is, which ones do I choose? Below is a list of the pros and cons of some of the most popular paid media channels to utilize:

Google Search Ads

Google Search Ads are one of the most popular forms of Paid Advertising and, when utilized effectively, can be a significant revenue driver for your business. With Google Search Ads, you can receive the top placement of search queries for your brand or keywords relevant to your business. For example, a Market Research and analytics company could target the keyword ‘Market Research Company’ and then be placed at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is an easy way to get qualified users to your website and drive leads.

While Google Search can be effective, it can also be competitive and costly, depending on your industry space. You will want to ensure the keywords you target drive qualified leads and present a positive ROI.

Social Media Ads

Social Media Ads are another great way to connect with potential customers who may not know your brand. For a B2B business, the most effective social media platform to place your ads will be LinkedIn, though others, such as Facebook, can also be effective depending on your industry.

With LinkedIn Ads, you can target users based on location, industry, job title, job functions, and interests or exclude users based on the same attributes. This can provide a unique approach to reaching a particular audience.

An additional strategy to ensure your paid ads generate qualified leads is to entice your target audience with an industry-specific case study or showcase the effectiveness of your product but require users to submit their contact information to gain access to the content.

Social Media

Most people worldwide are on social media and most likely include your target audience. Maintaining a robust presence on social media platforms can be a key part of a business’s digital marketing strategy in the B2B market.

The evolving landscape underscores businesses’ need to engage with B2B buyers on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. These channels serve as conduits for disseminating curated content and industry insights and offer unique opportunities for fostering connections and establishing thought leadership.

While some argue that B2B transactions primarily occur in a professional context, the growing trend of decision-makers leveraging social media for information and networking challenges this perspective. The strategic use of social media in B2B marketing facilitates brand visibility, trust-building, and the establishment of meaningful relationships.

For example, one of Go Fish Digital’s B2B clients, a company that provides funding for small businesses, has found success in leveraging social media to engage with potential clients. They do so by engaging and following other small businesses on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn and producing engaging content on these platforms that this particular audience may find useful.

Content Marketing and SEO

In B2B digital marketing, the relationship between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and content marketing is a cornerstone for success.

SEO is the guiding force, ensuring a business’s online presence is visible and strategically positioned on search engine results pages. By optimizing relevant keywords, meta tags, and website structure, SEO facilitates discoverability among businesses actively seeking specific products or services. Your first focus when reviewing the organic presence of your site should be on your revenue-driven pages and ensuring they are optimized.

Content marketing, on the other hand, breathes life into this digital visibility. It involves crafting valuable, informative content tailored to address the needs and pain points of the target B2B audience. Whether through blog posts, whitepapers, or engaging multimedia, compelling content captures attention, establishes authority, and builds trust. SEO and content marketing synergize to elevate a B2B business in the digital landscape, driving organic traffic, fostering credibility, and nurturing long-term business relationships.

An excellent example of utilizing these two tactics in tandem is a local Junk Removal Service targeting other businesses in their area. Not only do they have a service page around each type of junk or trash they remove, but they also utilize their blog to target informational keywords for each of these services, setting themselves up for success in the future when that user may be more inclined to use their business.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another powerful tool that can forge meaningful connections and drive substantial business outcomes for a B2B digital marketing strategy.

One of its primary advantages lies in its direct and personalized approach. Email campaigns can be tailored to address specific needs, challenges, and interests of individual businesses, fostering a sense of relevance that resonates.

Additionally, email marketing is a cost-effective way to nurture sales funnel leads. Whether delivering insightful content, sharing industry updates, or showcasing product offerings, emails provide a consistent touchpoint, keeping the brand at the forefront of the recipient’s mind. Furthermore, the analytics capabilities embedded in email marketing platforms enable precise tracking and measurement of campaign performance, allowing for data-driven refinement and optimization.

By leveraging the targeted and measurable nature of email marketing, B2B businesses can cultivate lasting relationships, drive engagement, and ultimately propel their growth in the digital sphere.

The Importance of Data Analysis

After the strategy and the tactics are set, how do we know if they drive real business and revenue? Analytics and data collection need to be properly set up to ensure that revenue is being generated. This also helps provide insight into what tactics are working and what areas need to be still improved.

This data and how you interpret it should be critical in your decision-making process. While one marketing channel may produce your desired lead amount and may seem successful, that channel could be mainly producing low or unqualified leads. A thorough review of the marketing tactics should then occur to see if that is the most effective tactic, or should the focus be on other marketing channels?

This is the importance of having tools to effectively track where your leads are coming from and adequately analyze the revenue driven by each marketing tactic.

Staying up to Date

In the fast-paced digital marketing landscape, staying on top of industry news is imperative for companies looking to grow, remain competitive, etc. Technological advancements, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), are reshaping the digital marketing terrain at an unprecedented pace. Awareness of these developments empowers B2B companies to leverage cutting-edge tools and automation, enhancing efficiency and efficacy.

The ever-evolving SEO, social media, and paid media trends also require a continuous learning mindset. Following thought leaders in these spaces, subscribing to digital marketing newsletters, and keeping up with industry news from giants like Google can all be powerful ways for B2B companies to stay ahead of the curve.

Conclusion

Starting a new marketing strategy can be a lot of work, but it can quickly impact your business growth and revenue if done effectively. As your business navigates the digital marketing space, always think about your audience and how to reach that audience with a number of different tactics effectively.

B2B Marketing Strategies to Amplify Revenue Streams is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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Let’s discuss why transparency is so important and how you can improve transparency with clients to deliver the best service possible.

Why Is Client Transparency Important?

Before going into the how, I wanted to touch on why client transparency is important. Imagine you are building your dream home, but you can’t continuously see the progress contractors are making in real time. You then put trust within the contractors to build your home to perfection after a few discussions. While in the minds of some this might be fine, some people may want to know every screw being used, others may want to make sure the drywall is up, and some may just want to make sure the kitchen is painted the right color. 

That is just like various marketing projects. With every project and client, there is going to be a specific goal or goals. To create a long-lasting partnership, you want to always make sure you are on the same wavelength with the client regarding these goals. If you don’t have complete transparency on how to reach those goals, those relationships can easily falter. To foster that partnership, below are some tools and methods utilized to ensure complete transparency and that you don’t waver from the client’s objectives. 

The Best Ways to Maintain Transparency

Responsiveness 

One instance when I was talking with a newer client, they asked a question about a specific post to see if we could make an alteration. I had a busy day of meetings and couldn’t respond for a couple of hours. As soon as I could get to a response, I apologized for my slight delay in getting back to her. She responded emphatically that I was “SO FAST.” 

Being responsive to your clients in a quick manner not only establishes transparency with them, but trust.  I recommend ensuring you respond to clients regarding any questions, comments, or concerns be answered within four hours (as much as you can). It allows your client to be at ease, knowing that if anything comes up, you will always be there as a partner to help your client reach their goals. 

Status Calls

One of the best ways to stay visible and make sure goals are aligned is to actually talk with your clients. As a team, we set up bi-monthly calls with all of our clients to discuss recent work and make sure they understand how their recommendations can benefit their overall goals. 

On these calls, I recommend directly informing the client exactly what our upcoming tasks will include to make sure we are touching on the highest-priority items first. You can directly place all of your upcoming initiatives in writing for the client to easily review and ensure priorities match up for all parties. 

I also recommend being as flexible as possible with these meetings. Always ensure that your client can attend the meetings, and if an additional meeting needs to be scheduled to go over things, be willing to do so. 

Project Management Tools

There are a number of project management tools in today’s world, but I recommend you find one that allows your clients to easily access, review documents, and communicate efficiently. 

We use a software called ClickUp to communicate with all of our clients. This houses and keeps track of all internal interactions and external conversations, and allows our clients easy visibility to review and approve materials before we execute the recommendations. 

ClickUp allows for customizability for clients to easily find documents, communicate directly on certain tasks with the project manager or other team members, and approve recommendations with the click of a button.  Each Client Review list also allows the client to see all new recommendations, any work that has been approved or completed, and easily send messages back to your team when something needs to be reviewed. Clients can organize their work with us for each service we provide and have a clear understanding of what work is being done all in one place. 

Finding the right project management tools for your team and client will allow for clear transparency and efficiency in the success of your clients goals. 

Reporting 

Digital Marketing and SEO is an ever-changing landscape, with continuous volatility of improvements and declines in impressions, traffic, and even revenue. Obviously, all of these factors are important to a business, and while improvements are always desired, growth by competitors and algorithm updates can cause unwanted declines. While no client or business is a fan of the word decline, being upfront with these changes and creating an action plan to combat them creates trust and visibility. 

We give all of our clients a fully automated report through Google Data Studio to allow them to see real time metrics from a variety of sources, including Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Search Console. With these reports, there’s the opportunity for clients to learn more about their business the way they need or want, allowing for full transparency. A client can alter the date and look back as far as their analytics lets them, look at a certain ad group and how much revenue is coming from a specific keyword, or see what marketing channel is driving the most sessions. This provides complete transparency with the client all in one place to easily show the health of their website. 

In addition to our reporting dashboard, to ensure that we are seeing no unnecessary declines and to point out improvements made, we recommend analyzing your client’s website metrics in-depth on a monthly basis. This allows the client to know that we are still thinking about their project as a whole, noting if we need to make adjustments, where, and how we can do so. 

Taking a Proactive Approach

No one can predict the future, especially when it comes to digital marketing and Google. Declines are bound to happen at some point. Algorithm updates are always occurring, user behavior can change in the blink of an eye, or a global pandemic can completely change how the world works. However, there are options that you and your team can take to minimize the above and be transparent with your clients. 

Our top SEOs, PPC experts, and campaign strategists are always looking for new thought leadership articles to grow the opportunities for each of our clients. There are always new ways to look at things, and getting the perspective of others in the respected community allows us all to grow. We share these learning opportunities with our entire team to allow for everyone to learn something new.

As a company, we are also very cognizant of major updates from Google. Our team keeps an eye on articles about possible algorithm updates and how they may affect the overall SERPs. Whenever there is a whiff of an update, we communicate this directly to clients during our bi-monthly calls to make sure we are transparent about the potential volatility. 

Conclusion 

No project is ever going to be perfect, but providing transparency through effective communication and various tools can ensure an effective partnership with you and your clients!

The Best Ways to Create Transparency For Clients is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.