We all know that businesses need to cater to their customers in order to keep them coming back. This can be in the form of enticing emails, regular sales, or heart warming stories that make you proud to be a customer. These are 
all forms of B2C, or business to customer marketing. However, sometimes the customer is another business who needs professional services that will increase the output of their own company. In this case, you have to engage in what is called B2B, or business to business marketing. B2B marketing can be very important for the acquisition of new businesses who want your services, and it’s different from B2C marketing because while individuals might make decisions based on feelings or emotion, businesses will make decisions based on a logical approach and will always ask the question, “how does this help our company succeed?” Here, we will discuss a few tips and tricks to B2B marketing that will help you increase your customer base and even create a more positive image for your company.
Key Elements of B2B marketing – the differentiation:
Basis Process followed:Business buying is more of a low risk proposition, trust matters here and multiple stake holders (including finance and subject matter experts) make it a complicated process.Bidding process with the one with the lowest quote is an acceptable process. Technical aspects understanding play a major in business buying.
Basis Buying Behavior:
B2B differs from B2C in a very basic way. Influential factors such as impulse buy, aspiration, consumption habbits etc won’t find a place in the business procurement scenario. Famous brands, earlier experience and products get preference in case of B2B buy while price and utility are prime for an individual consumer.
Demand and Supply:
In a B2B scenario, demand is less while supply is more. Meaning, more companies/agencies/sellers pitch for a limited demand/proposals in the market.
Relationship Management:
Many businesses thrive and succeed on this metric. Managing relationship with buyers is an art while keeping the trust intact and delivering the expected outcome always remains a challenge for sellers.
Always innovating:
Same products/services if not improved over time loose the shine as competitors are always up innovating something and snatch the client, hence its utmost important to experiment, innovate and communicate accordingly.
Tools and Channels for Effective B2B Marketing
Email Marketing and funnel marketing communication:
Email marketing is by far the most used B2B marketing technique, and is the most successful. In fact, according to HubSpot, about 93% of B2B marketers use email as a primary form of communication with both future clients and current ones. One of the most common uses of email is for company newsletters, a tried and true way to better your company’s image in the eyes of potential clients. It is also an opportunity to establish your company’s daily operations, it’s goals, and maybe even a few testimonials from satisfied customers. However, our inboxes are constantly hit with dozens of emails every day, so the challenge becomes creating a newsletter that won’t find itself in the trash. Not to worry, because there’s a way to do that.
The first step is to write a captivating subject line to entice your audience. This can be from a few characters to a full sentence, but the subject line must capture the audience’s attention and at the same time mention your business. The goal here is to be witty with your words, and it should take a long time to come up with the right subject line. If it doesn’t take long at all, there’s a chance you’ve done something wrong.
Next, what you want to do is only include one call-to-action statement per newsletter, meaning your customer should only have one thing to click on instead of the usual 10 CTA’s that are usually in poorly-written emails from other companies that lead to indecision on the customer’s part. One CTA means that your customer, or in this case a company employee, can focus on your one CTA, getting rid of the indecision problem.
Of course, there’s the problem of email responsiveness. According to HubSpot, over 80% of email users access email on their phones, and everyone knows what happens to those emails that don’t respond in the few seconds after we open them. So in order to fix this problem, you need to focus on email optimization. Make sure that your emails don’t require a steady Internet connection to load or are so large that it takes a minute for the graphics to show up. These emails will find themselves deleted very quickly. Therefore, spend your time focusing on this aspect, as it is very important to your company’s outreach.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is also very important, and is an umbrella term for many other types of outreach, such as content marketing and SEO marketing. Digital marketing helps because it gives businesses, who are more prone to logic and reason rather than emotion and testimonials, more information regarding your business’ expertise. There are several steps to get through this process, but the shortened version will work just fine.
First, you need to know who you’re after as far as clients. This is where it’s all about you; who is good for business? Who is bad for business? Who would benefit from our services? The answers to these questions will give you your client base, something you must remember for the next few steps in the digital marketing stage.
Creating a website, and eventually a blog, is important and key for B2B marketing. Why? Because it allows you to explain yourself in a clearer way than you could in a newsletter or an Internet ad. Again, B2B marketing focuses on rationality rather than emotion, so include things like, “our business can save you time, resources, and money,” or, “our business can help you increase productivity with our computer software products,” or whatever falls in that line. Remember, B2B marketing relies on the idea that the client will always ask themselves, “how will this make my company more profitable?” If your website answers that question clearly, then you’re in the gold. If not, then you probably need to revisit your blog and keep that question in mind. As always with marketing, it’s about the customer, and keeping that in mind can make the difference between success and failure.
B2B marketing can be hard. In fact, much harder than B2C marketing. It involves a lot more work because of the research that needs to go into finding customers, presenting a product to them that suits their needs, and then persuading them to buy it based on reasonable belief that it will aid their own business. While all marketing depends on you focusing on your audience, B2B marketing has to appeal to critical businesses who want nothing more than to better their own company, and you must be constantly focused on this fact, even for long-standing clients. Use these tips to help your business in the B2B marketing game, and as long as you’re focused on the message, your clients will do the same.
