How do you point your digital marketing strategy in the right direction? There was a time when your business being online was an option. However, time, technology, and business have all moved to the point where having an online presence is the bare necessity for success. That online presence needs to be driven by a strong strategy, especially for B2B businesses.
The two top reasons for putting your brand online? First, it allows you to increase your brand awareness. And second, customers can’t buy from you if they don’t know that you exist. After all, more than 75% of all B2B purchases start with online research.
When you’re planning your new B2B digital marketing strategy – or overhauling an existing one – keep that online research in mind. You must strive to provide your prospects the information they need to do research and answer their questions. Your goal is to prove that your company understands and offers the best solution for their challenge. When it comes to your B2B digital marketing strategy, there are four cardinal directions you should always keep in mind:
- Content & SEO
- Search Advertising
- Social Media Ads & Content
- Digital Communication & Lead Nurturing (Email, Chat, Messenger, Text)
Digital Marketing Strategy Content Marketing & SEO
We understand content marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can seem complicated. Bold Entity can help demystify the process and show you how they function as a critical part of your digital marketing strategy.
SEO is a strategy and series of tactics you make on and off your website to generate more visits by ranking your site higher in Google’s search results for the searches your prospects are making. Search engines use advanced algorithms to rank and present searchers with the best quality and relevant results to their query. Because organic, search-engine-driven traffic is often one of the primary sources of your website’s traffic, it’s critical to have a strategy in place for optimization.
Keep in mind, increasing your website’s SEO isn’t about playing tricks or using cheat codes. An essential SEO foundation is to create a B2B website with optimized code, structure, and layout. Technical SEO makes it easier for search engines and users to understand and use your site. A B2B SEO strategy also includes doing keyword research to understand what your prospects are searching for and their intent while searching.
Search intent is important because it helps you rank your website for the right searcher. For example, someone searching for chocolate cake, could want to buy a cake, find a cake recipe, or be looking for an image of a chocolate cake. If you ran a catering business, only one of those search intents would be useful for you to rank. Those keyword phrases are then married to the individual pages of your website to help them rank for the appropriate Google searches.
SEO goes hand in hand with the content strategy for your website to ensure future additions to your website continue to help your brand’s online search visibility. Creating content for your website is an opportunity to show prospects your company is the right choice. As part of your B2B digital marketing strategy, content builds your brand’s visibility, shows off your expertise and thought leadership in the industry, and provides valuable information to prospects to gain their trust.
When developing your content strategy, consider: would you buy a product from a salesperson who just lists their wares or one who shows a deep knowledge of what they sell and how their wares can resolve your particular problem?
Here are a few tips for planning your B2B content (or working with Bold Entity to develop it):
Play the Long Game
SEO and content are long-term B2B digital marketing strategies. Google moves at a slow pace when it comes to adjusting search rankings. It can take three months to over a year before you start to observe noticeable changes in your Google rankings. While it may be tempting to pull the plug early, stick to your strategy and stay the course. While SEO and content marketing are slow to start, they offer a long tail for ROI.
Focus on Evergreen Content
Good, quality content about the fundamentals of your industry and prospect challenges is just a relevant today as it will be in five years. Focusing your SEO and content strategy on developing and promoting this type of content offers some of the best marketing ROI, digital or traditional.
Advocate Don’t Sell
B2B prospects actively doing research generally aren’t looking for a sales pitch. They are top and mid-funnel in the buyer’s journey. Some may not even know what their problem is yet; they’re still troubleshooting and trying to identify their challenge. Content marketing works because it’s NOT a commercial or sales pitch. Your content needs to focus on informing, educating, and providing knowledge expertise to frame your brand as the go-to authority in your industry for prospects.
Don’t Guess, Research
Online research is a great place to start for developing your SEO and content strategies, but don’t forget to leverage all your sources for research. Ask your salespeople about common issues or pushback they get from prospects. Speak with current customers and leads to find out what they love about your company and what information they could not find online while researching.
Consistency
If high-quality content is king, then consistency is queen. Creating fresh new content regularly is just as essential as crafting quality content. Posting a couple of blogs a year whenever you think about it won’t change your Google rankings. Part of your content strategy should include a schedule for creating content. To be successful, you need to stick to the schedule and put out new, high-quality content consistently.
B2B Search Advertising Strategy
While search advertising may not have the long-term ROI as SEO and content marketing, search advertising targets potential customers at the moment they are actively seeking offerings like yours. It’s advertising perfectly timed to the user’s intent and offers the ability for your brand to reach prospects at just the right time.
Also commonly known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), search advertising is an excellent method to increase your site’s traffic with interested visitors. Plus, unlike other ways of reaching out to consumers, PPC allows you to make changes and pay as you go. If a campaign is successful, you can put more of your budget into it. Or, you can make tweaks to underperforming campaigns in real-time.
Here are Some Benefits of Search Ads
- Incredibly cost-effective to reach your targets
- Allows you to target warm leads only
- Combines with SEO to take up more real estate on search result pages
- You only pay when your audience takes action on the ad
- Ad-blockers do not stop search ads
- Analyze ad and campaign performance in real-time
Digital Marketing Strategy Social Media Ads & Content
If you’re looking for a great combination of brand awareness and ROI for your B2B marketing strategy, social media native content and ads are hard to beat. Social media advertising and native posting are part PR, SEO, content marketing, customer service, and reputation management.
On social media, it pays to vary your posts. A posting schedule can help you create a mixture of sales, informational, and relational information. Social media also allows you to interact directly and openly with new prospects and customers. Doing it right can lead to the development of a core of loyal customers and online brand advocates.
Some Ways Social Media Ads and Content Can Help
- Social media ads offer better target audience targeting than search ads
- Creates high-quality backlinks to your website to improve SEO and provides a way for visitors to find and share your content easily
- Gives you the ability to address prospect and customer issues directly
- Great opportunities for influencer and brand evangelist marketing
- Pixel gives you the ability to retarget offerings to website visitors through their social media feed
What’s pixel data? Pixels are Facebook’s version of analytics tracking code. It’s a data-gathering piece of code you place on your website. It collects data that helps you track conversions from your Facebook ads, optimize your marketing, craft targeted audiences, and even retarget your offerings to website visitors who abandoned your site before converting to a lead.
Digital Marketing Strategy Communication & Lead Nurturing
One way to get the best ROI from your CRM and B2B digital marketing strategy is to dedicate part of your budget toward digital communication and lead nurturing. Here are a few ways to make it happen.
Start with an Email
Sending one-way communication to your B2B customers and prospects through emails allows you to share news and updates, as well as share content and guide your prospects towards upselling and cross-sell opportunities.
Stand Out From the Pack
Use the full capacity of your CRM solution to bypass the competition. There are many ways to break away, such as lead segmenting, marketing automation, and personalization. These tactics can help you manage a large pool of leads on their individual buyer’s journey paths to conversion while helping provide them that one-on-one, personal touch that’s critical to B2B selling.
Meet Prospects on Their Terms
While many people still prefer communicating through phone calls and emails, there’s been an increase in website chatbots, messenger apps, and text messages as the primary means of prospect and lead communication. Consider if any of these would help your company better reach its customer base.
Keep Communication Fresh
No matter what communication tools you offer, make sure you are monitoring and responding to inquiries. For example, if you’re using Facebook messaging to connect with customers who have questions, make sure that someone is answering them back. A slow turnaround in modern forms of instant messaging media is the same as leaving someone’s call on hold.
Bringing Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy Together
The four cardinal directions of the B2B digital marketing strategy compass should work as one to help your company blaze its unique trail. By following the tips we’ve shared and continuing to produce excellent content marketing, you’ll see the benefits of increased online visibility and B2B digital marketing success.
Need Help Developing & Implementing Your Digital Marketing Strategy?
Bold Entity offers a comprehensive, results-driven approach to branding, marketing, and public relations focused on growing your business and strengthening revenue expansion. Our marketing, branding, and public relations services combine traditional approaches with digital solutions backed by proprietary data-based research. And just as importantly, we recognize every business is unique. We understand that identifying your company’s special spark – and successfully turning that into engaging content – is the key to not only sustaining your business but helping it thrive.
Contact Bold Entity Today to learn how our team of experts can help you develop and successfully implement your B2B digital marketing strategy.