Construction is among the first few commercial activities that kicked off with the arrival of the industrial revulation. These long-established roots of the construction landscape make it slow to adapt to various operational, marketing, and sales changes. Case in point, many companies are still working without devising a standalone Business-2-Business (B2B) marketing strategy for their construction business.
But first of all let’s learn what B2B Marketing is
B2B marketing is short for business to business marketing. It’s one of the two major categories of marketing and differs significantly from the other major category, B2C (business to consumer) marketing.
With a wider definition B2B marketing is promoting products and services to other businesses for use in production, general business operations or resale to other consumers.
Letting other companies know that your business exists and you have a product or service which will benefit them is the first step for B2B marketing. Increasing awareness B2B marketing gets companies interested in your brand and nurtures prospects with the goal of converting them into customers.
Developing long term relationships getting a critical role for B2B marketing. That’s why many companies use traditional strategies, like attending trade shows or employing a team of sales reps to build and nurture relationships under the B2B marketing purposes. But nowadays combining those strategies with digital tools helps them market to many businesses without losing their personal touch.
Successful B2B marketing combines traditional and digital marketing tools in a way that helps a prospect understand what you can do for their business. So B2B marketing is to let businesses know you exist your product is valuable and convert them into customers.
Continuation of the process in B2B Marketing
- B2B products and services are intended for use by any kind of business. These can include machines and supplies for manufacturers or software for companies to have a central database of all customers and prospects.
- B2B purchases usually carry a high price tag. They are being sold to businesses that have sizable budgets, unlike consumers who may have a limited disposable income. They may however still be low-cost purchases. Thin office supplies.
- The B2B selling cycle is usually long and complex. When businesses make a purchase, it is a commitment. It may be due to a contract or a lengthy implementation process as employees learn a new software platform.
- Many factors go into B2B purchases. Aside from the fact there is a commitment to make there may be multiple decision makers involved in the process. Interpersonal relationships and the quality of interaction process have with the sales team may also be a factor. Peer recommendations from other users or customers, including review sites are becoming a bigger factor in these decisions.
- B2B marketers are focused on breaking through the professional’s busy work day. Not all B2B marketing takes place online but a large amount of it does.
Who are our B2B customers?
Everyone in business needs supplies, inventory and tools to run effectively and serve their customers. This makes every business around whether it’s a corporation on the Fortune 500 list or a freelance web designer working in their home office that’s why all of them are getting our B2B customer day by day. Whether you are selling office supplies, paper for the printer or consulting services you are both a business and a customer of the other businesses. Therefore, trying to benefit from B2B marketing strategies for your business will be the most important choice.
What should pay attention to B2B Marketing?
Understanding the most costly B2B marketing mistakes makes it that much easier to avoid them. Here are a few things to watch out for:
- Falling to segment your audience
- Forgetting to identify conversion goals and create content accordingly)
- Relying on assumptions instead of data
Channels and Messaging in B2B Marketing
Channels and messaging are two components of B2B marketing strategies. B2B marketers mix different channels and messaging to connect with customers or other businesses. B2B channels are simply the avenues marketers use to connect with potential customers. The channel often dictates which type of messaging is ideal.
Channels can be of two types according to the purpose of the message:
- Offline: These are traditional marketing platforms such as in-person, over the phone and print ads. If it doesn’t happen on the internet it goes here.
- Online: Anything and everything where marketers connect with an audience digitally. If you see it on your phone or computer, it happens here.
Now, B2B marketers can pick and choose from different online and offline channels and test the results to see which channels work best for them. Here some of the most common offline and online B2B marketing channels:
Online Channels:
- Website: B2B marketers use websites to blog, display customer testimonials, collect email addresses and showcase their brand’s products and services.
- Social Media: B2B marketers can share content, showcase their expertise by answering questions and post images, videos the display the company’s culture and values.
- Email Marketing: This is one of the most common digital strategies around and still incredibly effective. With regular messages, marketers can stay in touch and nurture leads, all forum the convenience of their inboxes. Email can include special offers, new products or content that will be valuable for readers keeping them engaged with your brand.
- Digitals Advertising: the options for B2B marketers to advertise online are almost limitless. Some use banner ads on the top of websites or pay-per-click ads on search engines. Another example includes paid social media posts. It might be all of the above.
- Other Publications, Forums and Q&A Sites: Some B2B marketers publish content beyond their own websites. Sharing content on websites can help raise your brand awareness. It’s more important to include a link to drive traffic back o your site.
Offline Channels:
- Events and Trade Shows: this is one of the most popular offline strategies for B2B marketers. After attending and meeting industry insiders, marketers can segue into nurturing them. Event marketing can include attending trade shows, sponsoring conferences and hosting your own event.
- Direct Mail: Whose it’s often forgotten today, direct mail remains a viable B2B marketing strategy. The first step is identifying key influencers on buying committees.
- Print Ads: This continues to work well for B2B marketers and they don’t have to be massive billboards. Targeting specific newspapers, magazines and trade publications is more cost effective and will help reach your target audience.
- Sponsorships: This gives marketers the ability to build that connection in a targeted way.
- Public Relations and Influencer Relations: By building relationships with journalists and bolsters its credibility. Learn how to write a press release to execute your next PR strategy.
B2B Marketing Strategies
Channels are just the first piece of the puzzle in B2B marketing. Once you’ve chosen where to reach your audience, picking the right strategy is key. A defined marketing strategy will help you focus your time and increase effectiveness.
Here are some of the most common B2B marketing strategies:
- Content Marketing: it’s creating and sharing material that stimulates interest in your company’s products and services. It could be written content (blog post, ebooks, infographics, podcasts or a video on your Youtube channel). This strategy is called “hard sell” strategy. The emphasis is on providing materials people will want to interact with. Often it is there to answer a question they have or help solve a common problem you know your target audience may face.
- Account Based Marketing: This type of strategy is a popular strategy for B2B companies that sell to enterprise companies or those with more than 1, 000 employees. First, high level target accounts are selected. Then, individuals at those companies who are key decision makers are identified and marketing efforts are focused on engaging those people. The goal is to build interpersonal relationships with people who will turn into prospects, with a foundation that lasts for years to come. B2B companies use accounts based marketing in several ways such advertising, custom offers, hosting invitation, training and webinars.
- Marketing Automation: instead of having to do individual tasks on a daily basis, marketing automation does the work for you. This strategy helps facilitate a great customer experience. The touchpoints a customer or prospect has with your brand will be personalized based on the actions they take. There are plenty of marketing automation capabilities out there and more emerge every day as technology advances. E-mail marketing, landing pages, lead scoring, data management are some popular marketing automation.
- User-Generated Content from Customers: this helps get B2B customers overcome their skepticism. According to Demand Gen Report only 34 percent of B2B buyers think that content from vendors is trustworthy. How do marketers overcome stats like that? One part of the solution is user generated-content. Since it comes from actual customers and users of a product, it helps establish trust and credibility that your brand does what it says it will. Referral calls, reviews, video testimonials, written testimonials, case studies are the most popular types of user-generated content strategy.
- Inbound Marketing: this is a strategy that attracts an audience, identifies leads and convinces them to become customers. It does this through helpful, relevant content, social media, search engine optimization. Calculators, tools and quizzes, contributing to popular publications and blogs, posting on forums and Q&A websites, and email marketing are the most popular inbound marketing.
Testing different messaging and channels and tracking the results closely will help you make the most of every effort. And don’t forget to get the sales team involved.
Source: https://learn.g2.com/b2b-marketing
