In the previous article on B2B digital marketing, we discuss how digital marketing can be a game-changer for B2B companies. However, without a strong strategy in place, even the best digital marketing tools can prove to be ineffective, which is why you need to know some digital marketing best practices.
With rapid development in technology, you constantly need to innovate and optimize your digital marketing strategy to achieve success.
As a B2B company, you’ll be engaging with other businesses, and this would certainly require a different approach than engaging with individual customers and prospects.
Therefore, to fully reap the benefits of digital marketing, follow these digital marketing best practices.
Top 8 Digital Marketing Best Practices
1. Know Your Target Audience
First things first, begin by defining your target market. This part of your strategy will act as a guide when you kickstart your B2B digital marketing campaigns. You need to ensure your target audience profile is as accurate as possible.
When defining your target audience, consider factors, such as:
- Type of business
- Size of business
- Job title
- Location
- And more
Once you clearly know who your prospects are, you can determine the best digital marketing approach to engage with them.
2. Evaluate Your Digital Marketing Infrastructure
Secondly, ensure you have a robust digital marketing infrastructure in place to get the best results from your strategy. For B2B companies, digital marketing infrastructure comprises:
- A fully functional website
- Social media profiles
- Blogs
- A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
- Up-to-date contact details (phone number, address, email address, etc.)
Before you begin your digital marketing initiatives, make sure your infrastructure items are ready.
3. Define Your B2B Digital Marketing Goals
To set a proper direction for your B2B digital marketing strategy, it’s vital to clearly define the goals of your B2B company’s digital marketing efforts. What is the mission and vision of your digital marketing strategy?
Collaborate with key stakeholders from different business functions to ensure the digital marketing goings are aligned to the overall business goals.
4. Conduct SWOT Analysis
Once you’ve defined your target audience and digital marketing goals and set up infrastructure, perform a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) analysis to determine your current position in the B2B space.
This stage of your B2B company’s digital marketing strategy will involve thorough market research. It will also help you understand your competitors’ sales volumes, market share, digital marketing strategy, and so on.
Using SWOT analysis, you can also monitor and track current B2B digital marketing trends and use them to win an edge over your competitors.
5. Make the Most of Content Marketing
Content is one of the most critical assets of digital marketing. Sixty percent of marketers say that content marketing helps a great deal in generating demand and leads.
Content marketing is an important digital marketing strategy as it helps in engaging customers and lengthening their buying journey. Moreover, leading search engines such as Google constantly update their algorithms to find high-quality and relevant content. Therefore, whether you’re using blogs or whitepapers, or case studies to draw customers, ensure they’re authentic, engaging, and relevant.
6. Use an Integrated Digital Marketing Approach
An integrated digital marketing approach helps you craft messaging that is consistent across all customer touchpoints. An integrated digital marketing strategy typically comprises the following:
- Web design and development
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
7. Power Your Digital Marketing Efforts With Social Media
B2B companies typically benefit from social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Research shows that LinkedIn is the number one social media channel used by B2B marketers to distribute content. 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. Also, 91% of marketers consider LinkedIn as the best place to find high-quality and relevant content.
Social media is one of the most impactful mediums to draw and engage prospects and boost your brand awareness.
8. Add ABM to Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a useful digital marketing approach, especially for larger B2B companies that have proper frameworks to target key accounts.
ABM is an integrated approach that involves the sales and marketing teams, delivery professionals, subject matter experts, and executives in the client account to understand client challenges and determine ways to overcome them.
With insightful data and analytics on the client’s business and objectives, the team formulates comprehensive marketing and sales strategies for a single client account.
According to 80% of B2B marketers, ABM can outperform other marketing initiatives. Also, 92% of B2B marketers consider ABM extremely critical to their overall marketing efforts.
Don't let your weaknesses impact your ability to grow! Book a call to talk about how we can develop a digital marketing plan that helps you achieve your goals.
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