Business to business marketing is a distinct sector that requires a bespoke approach, we’re often contacted by brands and agencies that don’t segment their offering or proposition between consumer and business marketing – and they are quite different audiences.

However, for B2B marketers the creative spark you’re looking for might not be found directly within your trade press or even industry, and there’s actually a lot B2B marketers can learn by observing the approach of B2C companies.

 

B2B or Not B2B

With the GDPR on the horizon in just 6 months from now, targeted digital direct marketing and advertising routes are enabling B2B marketers to reach out and engage their potential customers in exciting new ways. The main difference between B2B and B2C marketing comes down to the buyers’ emotional perspective about purchasing decisions. Consumers make buying actions based on status, on security, comfort and quality. Business purchases are generally based on increasing profitability, reducing operational costs and enhancing productivity.

If you’re providing a service of product to other businesses, you need to focus your marketing spend into software and digital assets that offer your target what they need to make a rational buying decision.

Help a time-short B2B audience determine the value of the product and service you offer through quality of materials, with pithy and credible testimonials, and other trust cues that enhance your brand and offering. Simply stating that you’re the cheapest on the market, doesn’t always sway commercial influence, answer what your service will do for your audience, “save time and resource” is far more effective to a business user than a message based on pure cost.

It’s important to focus on providing as much value to your users as you can in your outbound messaging, the more transparent and authoritative you are with your expertise, the more comfortable your potential leads will be.

Digital Data Strategy

Often the root of the issue is not solely the messaging – the business tо buѕіnеѕѕ data, despite the wide and low-cost access to business CRM’s, segmentation options, email platforms – it’s the ‘market all’ approach that is often the turn off. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure you are using the correct type of marketing data for your target audience to gеt better rеѕultѕ. If your brand has even a dozen SKU’s- why market them everyone on your customer list? Marketing automation tools are effectively hybrid email marketing paths that connect with your CRM to enable you to automatically send highly targeted emails to leads that are personalised specifically to them, again segmentation is key. Traditional newsletters and email marketing are still important, the ability to capture more data on users and use behavioural-triggers has enabled B2B marketers to get a lot smarter with how they target users in the inbox.

Buѕіnеѕѕ-tо-Buѕіnеѕѕ (B2B) email mаrkеtіng is still a hіghlу effective commuications рrасtісе. However, just lіkе any оthеr оnlіnе marketing ѕtrаtеgу, understanding what type of marketing campaign you are carrying out from the above will ѕераrаtе уоur lаtеѕt campaign frоm those of your competitors.

Location & Geo-based marketing

Location-based marketing has been around for some time now, but it’s an instrumental tool for how B2B businesses advertise to business users on-the-go. Not only does the continued boost in smartphone users, but also the arrival of wearable technology, and new developments in location-based marketing – have made geo-targeting and beacon technology more popular among business marketers. The wearable technology market grew by almost 60% last year.

More often than not, this messaging will include ads and targeted copy that have been created professionally by an agency with the intention of being broadcast widely. A dancing cat .gif with your logo underneath isn’t going to work unless you sell kitsch (or cats).

Get AI serving your messaging

The process of using software to buy digital advertising instead of the traditional method of having humans buying and selling ads, programmatic advertising is coming out of the dark. Programmatic digital display ad spending which will account for 59% of spend on all digital display ad spending next year. Automated digital ad buying will only grow as mobile websites and apps continue to gain a foothold over desktop, and programmatic digital goes beyond just the standard banner ad.

With Google making 91% of its revenue from As Spend, programmatic is a chance for brands to place where and what bid margins they want to set, not be defined by Google’s secret (and often shady) algorithms. As programmatic grows on mobile and opens up more opportunities for ROI-based algorithms to dictate ad buys, look out for more B2Bs using this powerful technology to take the guesswork out of their digital ad spending

It’s really all still about the Data

A final note would be too ensure that you are reaching out to the relevant decision maker within the business. Your email will most likely remain unread if this goes to a general email account, and therefore you should always ask for a Senior Decision Maker when purchasing B2B Data. TDP Marketing specialise in supplying granular, accurate and highly relevant business data – why not split test your next campaign with 1,000 contact of your own records and 1,000 rented from us to gauge whether that precious data you’ve been hanging onto (arguably for too long) is as precious as you think.

Data suppliers will often promise massive volumes of data, and then deliver lists filled with inactive, irrelevant or expired contacts which are no good to your Email Provider, or your reputation. We offer 90% delivery on the data we supply, or over-supply or credits back for those records, where there aren’t sufficient volumes. Effective marketing data is about accuracy and provenance, not quantity. We will only ever supply data that we know is responsive, relevant and appropriate for your brand objective.

 

For a B2B Marketing uplift for your business, tell us what sort of customers you’d like more of – and we’ll run a count and get back to you.

 

[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]