“I HAVE A B2B, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN ANY ONLINE CAMPAIGN BECAUSE MY AUDIENCE IS NOT ON THE INTERNET”
How many times have we heard this phrase in meetings with customers or potential customers? One of the most important and interesting challenges, from our point of view as consultants in the Lifting Group, is to consolidate the idea of the importance of planning and establish specific strategies for B2B businesses, or companies whose audiences are other companies and professionals, in the Online Channel or Digital Channel.
We talk about specific strategies because B2B priorities are different from those that B2C businesses may have and we, as a marketing team of these companies, must adapt our rhetoric to their needs and transmit that B2B companies can also obtain sales and benefit from a strategy of powerful contents, collaborations, e-mail marketing or social networks using inbound marketing.
Although many of the B2B companies believe that these tools are not for them, in this post we shall share tips and stages of work so that, as we mentioned at the beginning, this idea that has already being sown is consolidated.
The main objective of inbound marketing strategies is basically to increase, create and detect leads that are really interested in the business sector, a target that any company is interested in. How, then, is the plan to follow set?
Step 1 – Start with a SEO positioning strategy
To get a good start with our strategy for B2B inbound marketing it is necessary to stress the vital importance of being well positioned at SEO level. Although these companies believe that their audience is not on the Internet, it has been shown that a high percentage of B2B target customers start their selection of suppliers by taking a look at the possibilities offered by Google.
Step 2 – Generate interesting contents
Once we know the most important keywords for our audience to find us easily through search engines we must work on them through the content, both static (corporate information, products or services) and especially dynamic (blog) of our website.
We are trying to generate very interesting information to first capture the attention of our target audience and offer them easy solutions to their problems.
Step 3 – Encourage your public with a call to action
Calls to action are elements, usually banners, which are placed on the website or on the corporate blog so that, while you offer interesting information and solutions to the problems of your target audience, you get their attention and tell them clearly the next step to solve these problems is to contact your B2B company.
Step 4 – Develop suitable landing pages
It is all very well to draw the attention of your audience through a banner on which they have to click on, but have you thought of what they will find behind that click? Landing pages look to actually achieve the B2B objectives, to generate business opportunities or leads. For example, these pages within the web usually contain forms so that prospective customers can complete them with their data.
Step 5 – Sort and organise your leads
This is not only about getting contact details of our potential customers, the B2B company needs to know what are the most interesting ones for their objectives and to establish a special business contact protocol with them.
Here some great allies of inbound marketing come into play, the CRM. Such tools allow a database of potential customers to be created with relevant information about them and which is very useful for developing future commercial actions. Thus valuable information is obtained for B2B companies: very defined and specific potential customers.
Step 6 – Analyse and suggest improvements
Constant analysis of our strategy is vital to know how our potential customers our behaving with what we have prepared for them, as well as the results of each of the previous phases.
On the other hand, a good strategy for B2B inbound marketing does not stop at achieving leads, but in thoroughly analysing them and trying to keep them through the customisation of business strategies aimed at them.
Finally, once the strategy has been put into action we are sure new ideas, improvements and adjustments will arise, so, let’s get to work!
