With a growing number of potentially viable marketing strategies becoming available, it can be difficult to find the strategies that will work best for your business. That difficulty is only increased if you’re a B2B brand and your customers are other businesses. Fortunately, there is a lot of data available on how the top B2B companies spend their marketing budget. That’s why in this insight, we will break down the top three marketing strategies based on ROI (return on investment) for B2B companies in the United States.
The Transition to Digital
Let’s start out with the digital transition and what it can mean for your business. As it is likely apparent in your day-to-day life, we are becoming increasingly dependent on digital platforms to perform some of our most basic functions (e.g. school, work, transportation, etc.). Inherently, companies should pick up on this shift and see how to best optimize their marketing efforts around this transition. And they are. Global spending on digital ads is expected to reach $389.29 billion in 2021, a 17% increase from 2020, a year when almost everything was virtual. This is expected, though, because most companies scaled back their marketing operations during the first peak of the pandemic and are now rebooting their teams, taking into account the shift to digital that the pandemic has accelerated.
Top Marketing Strategies
Creating demand today is about introducing your brand to your target market. We want your audience to remember your brand’s name and purpose. When a company realizes it has a problem that your product or service is uniquely positioned to solve, you should have a brand story that walks them down the sales funnel where you, or a sales representative is able to convert them into a customer.
Email Marketing
Time and time again email has proven to be the most effective demand generation tool available to B2B businesses. Every business person checks their email on a regular basis which is why it’s no surprise that email is referred to as the Holy Grail of marketing. The ROI for email marketing can be as high as 4400%, or for every $1 you spend, you make $44. It’s easily the highest ROI that any method can produce and thus it is imperative that you do it right. Because, if done right, it can mean significant returns for your business.
The reason email is such an effective tool has to do with the amount of impressions vs. cost. Unlike spending money on paid advertisements, email impressions only cost as much as the time spent to write a message and click send from your inbox. While your business development team might use email marketing software which can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand every year, the largest cost will most likely end up being your time. If you’re like many B2B companies and your product or contract cost is many thousands of dollars, the amount of time spent writing a well-crafted email can easily make it worth the time.
Website and Organic Traffic
The second best marketing tool available to your business is your website. And we cannot highlight this one enough. The largest portion of a potential buyer's time is spent researching the options or solutions available to them. This is when having optimized SEO comes in handy. Having your website land at the top of SERPs (search engine result pages) and be the first option available to the potential buyers can mean your brand being an option or not. Most people don’t look beyond the first couple of results which is why it is so important that your website shows up near or at the top.
Paid SEO is also an option. Notice the first couple of options on your Google searches say “Ad” next to them? This is paid SEO and your company can take advantage of this tool, too. Better yet, you only pay for what you get. Meaning that you don’t have to pay to just show up on someone's search result page. You pay for the clicks and engagement that your brand receives from the paid SEO.
Content Marketing
One of the most valuable strategies for content marketing and moving prospects through a sales funnel is through blogging (page 25). By creating articles for your potential customers to read, you can effectively walk them through the buyer journey by helping them to align on the core beliefs unique to your brand. By fully understanding the priorities and concerns of your customers, you can create content that works to align them on your vision in a completely hands off process. (For a guide on how to best do so, check out our Insight, How to Automate Demand for B2B Brands with Effective Storytelling).
In-Person Events
The third best marketing channel that created demand for B2B businesses was doing in-person events (page 17). This is a range of webinars, trade show events, or just other in-person opportunities. People trust people and this ranking proves it. By creating awareness for your brand through word of mouth or a presentation, you can show someone that they have a problem that needs being solved and that your brand is in a position to be a solution for them, all in one swoop.
Through all of these marketing channels, marketers achieve a lot. Demand generation is definitely on the list, but that’s not either the only reason that marketers conduct outreach nor should it be. In fact, creating brand awareness was cited by businesses as being the leading result of having done these types of marketing outreach (page 23). Building credibility and trust followed creating brand awareness. And, demand or lead generation was the third biggest outcome of the outreach.
Knowing this information can be vital to your business in understanding where to focus your efforts and why to conduct outreach. By creating brand awareness and building trust in your brand, you are effectively creating demand for your brand. You are putting your brand at top of mind for potential buyers and your larger target audience.
But after having created the awareness and trust in your brand, people are likely to visit your website to learn more. And this is where a website can be your best salesperson. Providing the most up to date information to potential buyers in places that are easily accessible and navigable can mean a good user experience and an even more amicable association with your brand.
All of this to say that investing in effective marketing outreach through email, your website, and doing in-person events can offer your brand its highest returns. Prioritizing an effective outreach and aligning your marketing and sales teams to be on the same page will prove to convert more potential buyers into customers.
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