The global pandemic has pressured businesses massively, forcing them to change the way they deal with old clients and attract new ones.
So it is not merely the end consumers whose purchasing decisions have been radically impacted by the pandemic. If you sell to other businesses, it’s crucial to utilize B2B digital marketing strategies 2021 to drive conversions and ultimately positive ROI.
As companies continue to adapt to the new standard, they are testing and deploying new strategies to deal with the post-pandemic market and shifting customer priorities.
Here are some of the B2B digital marketing strategies to enhance your lead generation efforts and convert more leads.
Effectively Leverage Digital Channels
COVID-19 outbreak changed the business paradigm drastically regardless of nature, size and industry. Like other aspects, it altered how companies devise a digital marketing strategy that works well and seamlessly connects with their potential customers.
Like other businesses, Canadian B2B companies also need to have a robust digital presence. Digital marketing comprises search engine optimization (SEO), paid ads, a website, and any other forum that your B2B organization leverages to stay active virtually.
Here are some practical methods that can help you strengthen and enhance your digital marketing strategy efforts.
Describe Your Target Audience
A robust strategy for B2B digital marketing always starts with describing your intended audience and buyer persona.
This psychographic and demographic information helps you with almost every other digital marketing campaign, thereby ensuring that you are able to get in front of the right audience with relevant material and content, helping you make most of your resources.
Create Your Company Website
Digital marketing efforts can’t quite function and aren’t that effective without an engaging, informative website. More than 80% of the customers visit the brand’s website before they make the actual purchase.
Furthermore, since the usual B2B sales cycle involves various vital players such as decision-makers, gatekeepers, and other people who have to make a buying decision, websites are a straightforward way for influencers to exchange and share information with their followers about your products and services.
Optimize Your Online Presence With SEO
It is vital that your company website is more than merely compelling, engaging, and informative. It should be discoverable for your customers. To achieve this, you can leverage technical SEO and on-page SEO tactics.
These strategies include everything from meta descriptions and image alt-text visible to your audience to site speed and structured data. Off-page search engine optimization also plays a central role here. This means using social sharing and external linking strategies, i.e., SEO techniques that take place off your site.
Paid Search Campaigns
Finally, strengthen and complement your company’s digital presence with PPC advertising. These are paid ads, but you only pay for the clicks you get on these ads. This helps you get your brand and content in front of new audiences through search engines and other social avenues.
Moreover, you can also maximize your PPC investment and efforts by advertising your specific products and services as well as your blogs, brand personality, social media content, company tagline, etc.
An excellent way to gauge your paid ads’ ROI is by incorporating your audience’s data and boosting and generating content that they can resonate with.
For instance, it is implausible for a new consumer who has never heard of your brand searching for your specific product. They may search through a product feature or a location-based solution. To reach your prospective clients, it is critical to target the relevant categories within your brand and then promote your product or services.
Enhance Your Email Marketing Efforts
Email marketing is a reliable way to reach the decision-makers at client businesses.
Did you know: 93% of B2B digital marketers already leverage email? When implemented correctly, email marketing can lead to higher engagement which converts your subscribers into leads and ultimately your customers.
Most B2B customers look out for rationality and good, positive ROI. Essentially, they ask themselves: How can a specific business help their business grow?
For this reason, your email marketing efforts must consistently resonate with and focus on your business customers and aspects that matter to them, such as resources, time, and money.
Email marketing is a powerful avenue that helps you share your brand’s content while ensuring professionalism.
83% of B2B organizations send out email newsletters as an essential part of their content marketing strategy. In fact, 40% of marketers consider newsletters crucial to their content marketing program’s success.
However, with the constant barrage of email messages flooding customer’s inboxes today, it is more vital than ever to develop and send valuable marketing emails.
Develop Compelling Content
Before you devise your content marketing strategy, it is imperative to know that B2B customers are driven by logic, desire to be educated, and focused on expertise. What practical marketing tools can you use to meet the expectations of your customers and prioritize their preferences?
Having a solid content marketing tactic adds value to the customers and educates them precisely what your B2B customers want. Content marketing facilitates your SEO efforts.
This involves anticipating your audience’s preferences and what they are searching for, helping them discover relevant content and your website, and potentially converts them to your customers.
It is vital to note that you can make most of your content marketing efforts when you align them with different customer journey stages. For instance, the awareness intends to educate and inform the buyer on their concerns and pain points.
Quite often, marketers overlook the fact that it is crucial to help your customers identify the need and problem to offer them your products/services.
Also, try testing different content types such as videos, webinars, or eBooks to gauge what format appeals to your audience.
80% of B2B decision-makers like to get information and educate themselves from an article compared to an advertisement. Knowing this, you need to put the same resources (if not more) into your content marketing than your ad strategy.
Because the buyer’s journey in a B2B setting different, the content you develop should be more focused and tailored to your specific customers’ requirements.
Strong Social Media Marketing
75% of B2B customers and 84% of executives leverage social media when making a buying decision. Social media marketing is not merely for brands that target individual consumers.
It is challenging for many B2B companies to use social media to connect with their customers because of a lengthier sales cycle and extended chain of command.
Like other businesses, social media marketing is a brilliant way to build brand awareness, give your company online visibility and personality, and humanize your business. These all are very influential factors when it comes to connecting and marketing to your potential customers.
Furthermore, social media is an exceptionally effective forum to share your content and enhance your brand expertise, which B2B customers appreciate.
While your social media business account might not convert visitors as frequently as your email marketing or content, they are just as crucial. In this case, your company followers are just as precious and valuable, and they can convert to leads and customers with a strategic approach.
Augmented Reality And Video Marketing
Advanced digital marketing strategies such as augmented reality and video content are B2B digital marketing strategies that are often overlooked.
Video marketing is an excellent way to incorporate more visual aspects into your buyer’s journey. At present, more companies are leveraging video content and case studies to support their digital marketing efforts. And this trend has created traction in the B2B industry, with 70% of B2B customers watching videos to conduct product research before they do business with a brand.
And Video content and marketing are likely to increase rapidly in the upcoming years. For customers, streaming video serves as a survival tool that keeps them connected to their preferred brands’ products and services.
It helps B2B buyers by assisting them to gain new skills and learn about recent trends. By 2024, spending on videos is projected to grow to 12.66 billion dollars, up from 10.18 billion dollars in 2019.
On the other hand, augmented reality coupled with video content can enhance and take your digital marketing efforts to new heights.
Wrapping Up
The above B2B digital marketing strategies 2021 can help you improve leads significantly. Hopefully, it can help you develop an actionable plan to survive what indicates a challenging year.
B2B customers tend to be more critical and meticulous with the experience they are expecting. Focusing on the overall buyer’s experience can help ensure a seamless journey across multiple digital channels and platforms.
