B2B Marketing: 6 Proven Methods for Effective B2B Growth

B2B marketing is essential to effective growth for any business, but sustained success and customer retention require a targeted approach.

You need to develop a strategy that takes into account all aspects of what makes a lead convert and view your entire marketing plan holistically so it supports business growth.

In this article, we look at proven methods of B2B marketing that are consistently effective at achieving those goals.

1. Develop a Targeted Content Marketing Strategy

In B2B marketing, your content strategy supports every stage in the sales funnel.

With effective content, you can increase brand awareness, further your authority, display expertise and build trust and loyalty with your target audience.

B2B audiences are looking for long-term solutions, particularly in B2B SaaS, these purchases are significant investments of company money. Content marketing allows you to demonstrate the value of your product in answering their needs – above others.

This is achieved by understanding your target audience and their pain points. Identifying this allows your business to build a solid content plan that resonates with and engages these users.

Effective B2B marketing content types

Good B2B content marketing involves developing a strategy based on SEO insights and user behaviour to create content, including:

· Blog posts
· Landing pages
· Case studies
· Email marketing
· Videos
· Infographics
· White papers and eBooks

How to create an effective content marketing strategy

Developing a content calendar that works in tandem with wider marketing strategies is an effective way to support your goals. Your calendar should include consideration of company sprints and stand-on content pillars that validate your key areas of expertise and the value your company provides.

Plan out where and when content will be distributed, and its type, based on the sales funnel stages:

Awareness stage: Articles, social posts, infographics and eBooks on industry topics are all useful for delving into industry topics and showcasing expertise and authority. Use keyword research to inform and create a solid backbone for your B2B strategy.

Consideration stage: eBooks and whitepapers on your product, case studies and comparison guides are all useful at the middle of the funnel stage. These customers are actively looking at solutions and comparing them, so this is your opportunity to use content marketing to tell them why they should choose your service.

Conversion stage: At the bottom of the funnel your content marketing should be persuasive, encouraging users to take the final step and purchase. Testimonials, product demonstrations, pricing guides and interactive tools all help in the decision stage.

2. Leverage Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing is crucial for developing relationships with key accounts in B2B. It involves directly targeting individual high-value accounts and nurturing the relationship on a more personal level. These accounts are typically large organisations that are most valuable to your B2B business.

Account-based marketing relies heavily on the sales team working in tandem with marketing collateral to contact and engage with these key clients at specific points in time. The goal is to develop a solid working relationship that encourages them to take on further tools or increase their subscription size (in the case of B2B SaaS).

Why use ABM?

ABM is an effective way to increase ROI from key clients. You can personalize messages and campaigns to speak directly to their wants and needs, resulting in high engagement and retention rates.

Importantly, that personalized touch makes these accounts feel like there’s a relationship, building your trust and credibility. This in turn also increases their feeling of loyalty, again making them more likely to

How to implement ABM in B2B Companies

• Step one: Identify your high-value accounts. This will be based on their previous revenue with you, their likelihood of staying and your ability to upsell to them. Other accounts will be those you identify that have similar potential as existing high earners.
• Step two: Research and target these accounts. Information gathering is an important step in helping your marketing materials and sales team appear well-versed and able to discuss specific pain points with stakeholders.
• Step three: The personalised approach. Create tailored, personalised content that speaks directly to these accounts. This could include personalised emails, customised whitepapers, or targeted ads, for example. Keep messaging consistent with their particular needs and follow up with calls from the sales team that align with the marketing messaging.
• Step four: Relationship nurturing. Direct communication is a necessary step in nurturing these key relationships. The sales and marketing teams can keep in contact via email, webinars, social media marketing or phone calls to engage directly with stakeholders and build brand loyalty.
• Step five: Track and optimise. Constantly track the success of ABM campaigns to inform future strategy and tweak messaging accordingly.

3. Utilise Data-Driven Marketing

Data is essential to the success of B2B marketing.

Without analytics, your campaigns are effectively shouting to the wind. They’re uninformed and unaware of what works and what doesn’t.

We recommend investing in a third-party dashboard that can consolidate and standardise your data from across multiple other analytics platforms (GA, GSC, HubSpot etc.). This simplified reporting makes it easy for you to look at all your data holistically.

Data informs:

• Decision-making: It provides evidence for future decision-making. Marketing metrics inform your team of your customer’s behaviours, the campaign successes and shifting patterns and trends in the industry.
• Personalisation: Data lets you reengage with prospects through retargeting, or to segment your audience based on their behaviour or demographics for more personalised messaging.
• Campaign changes: By constantly tracking data you are ensuring your business can adjust their campaigns reactively, improving their marketing effectiveness.

With this information, you can improve a business’s ROI through experimentation and A/B testing, using data to influence creativity.

By integrating KPIs based on valuable data points across your campaigns you can see the bigger picture of your customers and success rates.

4. Implement Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing means considering your marketing alignment across various platforms to keep messaging and branding consistent.

By targeting across different content types and places like social media, email, PPC and organically, you increase your chances of engaging with leads throughout the user journey.

This omnichannel or multi-channel marketing approach is holistic and cohesive, enhancing your brand’s visibility for maximum impact.

How to Manage Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing can seem overwhelming. However, it’s far more effective than choosing just one or two channels to target.

Omnichannel customers spend 10% more online than single platform users and overall generate an ROI 5 times greater. So, your sales funnel must include multi-channel targeting as part of the overall B2B marketing strategy.

There are 5 simple steps to making this effective:

• Start small: Pick your best and most effective platforms or ways of advertising initially. Only focus on a few and build out a solid foundation of content and engagement types.
• Be consistent: Your marketing campaign should align across all the channels used. Messaging and branding should be consistent and easily identifiable.
• Tailor your marketing: Consistent doesn’t mean identical. Be aware of the platform being used and use that to inform how you structure your messaging. Someone on Facebook, for example, will be receptive to different phrasing than in Linkedin B2B marketing.
• Analyse effectiveness: Don’t forget to track everything and adjust accordingly to successes and failures within campaigns.
• Focus on the B2B customer: Different channels are more effective at different points in the sales funnel. Make sure content and messaging are geared toward one end goal but also tailored according to where they are in the funnel.

Successful multi-channel marketing requires a solid strategy and detailed plan of attack that encompasses content, SEO and paid advertising to reach B2B customers.

5. Invest in Marketing Automation Tools

No one can do it all by hand. Marketing automation tools exist to streamline workflows and improve productivity so marketers can focus on important aspects like strategising.

In B2B this is particularly important as you can nurture leads and set up personalised communication without having to do it all by hand.

This means a B2B marketer can handle multiple campaigns at once, checking their workflows and analytics, and making adjustments where necessary, at scale.

Overall, this results in improved efficiency, less human error and faster response times. All of which leads to better conversion rates and less time spent on administrative tasks.

Common Marketing Automation Workflows:

· Email drip campaigns and sequences
· Lead generation and prioritisation campaigns
· Personalised advertising and messaging
· Social posting and scheduling
· PPC campaigns

Overall, marketing automation workflows lead to a clearer understanding of the bigger picture and the behaviour of customers as they work through the sales funnel. By tracking their interactions and engagement, you can devise informed campaigns that trigger according to certain behaviours, personalising the user journey.

This results in better nurturing and thus a lead who is more likely to spend more on conversion, leading to higher ROI.

6. Focus on Building Long-Term Relationships

Unlike B2C marketing, where sales are typically low-cost, quicker purchases, B2B sales are often large-scale investments for companies.

This means the decision process is longer and involves more people, making relationship building a crucial element of B2B and B2B SaaS marketing.

It’s 5 times more expensive to get a new customer than to retain an old one. A good portion of your marketing efforts should be based on retention and upselling to existing customers, by further developing your rapport with them.

In this, sales and marketing should work together to ensure a lead feels they have had personalised support and have received value from the product.

How to Nurture B2B Relationships

Your marketing collateral and sales team play a big part in keeping in touch with customers throughout the product lifecycle and preparing them for renewal. Here are a few of the best ways to nurture B2B customers and make them more likely to choose your services again:

· Personalised communication: Tailoring to each client shows your business has a vested interest in helping them overcome their specific pain points. By providing a specific solution, customers can appreciate how your business relates directly to theirs.

· Regular follow-ups: Quarterly business reviews and conversations that help a customer get the most out of your product or service build customer loyalty. In one call or webinar, you’re demonstrating additional value they could benefit from and showcasing your company’s stellar support.

· Value-added services: Provide extra value with case studies, whitepapers and in-depth ebooks covering industry topics and providing valuable advice that shows you are reactive and adaptive to changes.

· Special/Exclusive offers: Offer them an exclusive chance to try a new tool, for example. By providing special bonuses for those already with your B2B company, you can get early access feedback and demonstrate additional added value.

How to Measure B2B Relationship Success

Like every other aspect of B2B marketing, solid data-driven insights will provide insight into the success of your relationship-building initiatives.

You can then use various calculations to determine the official metrics for success:

· Customer retention rates: Track how many returning customers you have year-on-year and what % of your overall revenue these makeup.

· Client satisfaction scores: Get qualitative results by sending out surveys or feedback forms

· Customer lifetime value (LTV): You can work out a customer’s lifetime value using this calculation:

LTV = (Customer Revenue x Years with Business) – CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

· ROI calculator: You can work out your ROI percentage using this calculation:

ROI= (Revenue−Cost)/Cost x 100

Conclusion: Harnessing Proven Methods for B2B Marketing Success

A robust content marketing strategy, backed by data-driven insights, will help your business demonstrate authority and build trust with its B2B audience.

It’s also crucial to take a holistic approach by targeting key accounts, nurturing long-term relationships, and leveraging marketing automation tools to effectively manage multiple channels.

With helpful resources to guide you, or an expert team like Common Ground to improve your ROI, your B2B marketing strategy will become one of your company’s biggest strengths.