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Hey guys,
Marketing to businesses is very different than marketing to individual consumers. OK, that's my plug, now let's get into it.
Any company that sells products or services to other businesses needs solid B2B marketing strategies.
If you're doing B2B marketing, you already knew that.
B2B audiences are a little more straightforward and a little more uniform than B2C audiences where demographics, interests, and platforms vary HUGELY!
So, here are a few things that you need to know about your B2B audience.
First of all, you should know that the motivator of most people seeking a B2B product or service, is financial gain, ROI, efficiency, risk mitigation, and growth.
And growth is a big topic, it's not just profit. It could be growing leadership skills, increasing sustainability efforts, it could be making a product better or growing team members' livelihoods, or upskilling team members - things like that.
Generally speaking, when making a decision for a business, customers are going to want to deal with a salesperson or an account manager they want a point of contact for their purchase process, and for your service providers, they want a point of contact or a relationship for the duration of their service.
There are exceptions to this of course, I can think of plenty - but by and large, this is a core difference in B2B marketing and B2B sales.
For us at Mint, even though we were digital marketers and our team are world-class at what they do, we find we still need to have our people actually talk in-person to new clients when they are coming on board. We get a lot of leads and brand awareness through digital marketing but we still need that human touch in our overall marketing process.
Another thing that's unique to B2B audiences is that quite often, with B2B products and services, there will be multiple decision-makers involved. This means your sales cycle will be longer because typically, there will be wait times for internal meetings, executive teams, or boards to make decisions.
So often, we get asked what platforms people should use to get in front of their B2B audience. What will be best for your business varies hugely but email marketing, Google marketing, and social media channels are often best. That's a big topic that I'll cover in another video but for now, I'll share two things:
- Don't get too caught up in using LinkedIn just because it's a B2B platform. LinkedIn can be great but think about how often you login to LinkedIn vs how often you log into Facebook.
- Invest in content marketing and demonstrating that you have valuable insights and information to share with your audience or prospects. Not only is it a great way to attract new clients or customers, its also a useful mechanism in retention. More on that in another video.
For now, I hope this helps. Thanks for watching.
