[UPDATED] B2B Online Marketing: How to Do It Right

As a B2B marketer, it is your constant goal to attract qualified leads. After all, most B2B sales involve a series of meetings with all the suits in the C-suite, so it’s essential to get them to the table in the first place.

To get more leads — and more meetings — you need to pump up your B2B online marketing strategy. We’ll show you some proven ways to do just that.

6 Essentials to Build a Winning B2B Online Marketing Strategy

Identify your target customers

You can't market to everyone. It takes too much time and effort.

When choosing your target customers, you should identify the types of businesses that need what you sell. And from that pool, you need to pick who are qualified to buy your products and services because it makes no sense to market to companies who don't have the funds or the interest to buy.

The best way to target the right audience is to create customer personas. Look at the types of businesses that have brought in the most profit to your business.

If you're a startup, look at the big players in your industry because these companies are your target.

If the CEOs of your target businesses are primarily females in their fifties, write that down. Look at their interests and pain points and determine how your products or services can relieve that itch.

Build an engaging website

Time is precious — especially for businesses. Before they’ll schedule a meeting with you, they want to know if they really need you.

A well-built website can do that job. Your clients are now heading straight online to make informed decisions before making a purchase.

So, make sure you create a user-friendly and informative website that gets customers to learn more about your business. Your website should be responsive and fast in order to provide the best user experience. That’s why it’s worth investing in the right online solutions starting with your web hosting.

Apply SEO strategies

A great website filled with helpful content won't serve its purpose unless people can find it online. Google alone generates millions of search results on a single query. Without search engine optimisation (SEO), your business will simply be a needle in a haystack.

SEO involves a series of techniques that aim to rank your website high on search engines and improve your online visibility. Getting the top spot on search engine results pages (SERPs) is the best way to boost organic traffic to your business, establish authority, and ultimately increase your profits.

It has three main components:

On-page SEO is optimising your page and content for users and search engines. It's ensuring that you provide valuable content to users that search engine bots can easily index. It involves elements such as meta descriptions, page titles, image alt-texts, internal links, and site speed.
Off-page SEO refers to techniques applied outside your website to boost your search rankings. It includes a solid backlinking strategy, social media sharing, and content marketing to ramp up your website's authority online.

Technical SEO is all about working on the technical aspects of your website so search engine crawlers can easily and effectively crawl it. Search engine crawlers or bots evaluate your site's security, speed, responsiveness, and other factors. The better your performance, the better your search rankings.

SEO is constantly evolving to meet the ever-dynamic ranking factors, especially Google. The right SEO tools or expert SEO strategy gets you a leg up in the competition and strengthens your online presence.

Create thought leadership content

Now that you know what drives your prospects, you need to reach out to them with compelling content that can solve one (or more) of their problems.

In other words, become a thought leader.

But remember, thought leadership content isn't a yawn fest filled with jargon and lofty words — all designed to show off your expertise. And it's not a list of your company's accomplishments, either.

Thought leadership content is where you can share your expertise and how your target customers can benefit from your products or services.

Share your knowledge with them, whether it's a LinkedIn post that provides insights they might not have thought about before or a better way to improve their conversion rate with their target customers. Every post you write should focus on your customers and their needs, not your business.

Use your customer personas to target the right audience for your content appropriately. With today's data analytics and audience targeting capabilities, your boosted social media posts, online ads, and other content will reach your target audience.

Offer valuable content in exchange for their email address.

One of the best ways to get qualified leads is to use your blog posts as a springboard to dive deeper into the topic. If your initial blog post was helpful, think about how a more in-depth treatment of the same subject would serve their needs better.

Instead of making your call to action an invitation to do business with you, let them download a white paper or ebook instead. It's subtle, it requires little commitment, but more importantly, it provides your prospects with valuable content to improve their businesses.

Ensure that the content you offer is of the highest quality. Poorly written thought leadership content will likely cause nearly 30% of your prospective customers to drop your business from consideration.

Nurture potential leads with email marketing

Once you have their email address, you’ve already secured a direct line to their inbox. This is the best channel to woo your leads and establish a lasting relationship with them.

This is where email marketing plays a great role in earning engagements, increasing retention, and maintaining a close business connection with your clients. You can offer them exclusive deals, priority peeks at new solutions, or event invitations.

Structure your emails to go out at regular intervals. Data shows that 3 to 5 follow-up emails are the optimal range to get a positive response. After those deliveries reach a certain number, offer them the opportunity for an in-person or Skype consultation. To sweeten the pot, offer them a set of your best ebooks when they book the meeting.

These types of lead-nurturing emails, when done correctly, will result in more conversions, more sales, and more profit for your business. With an email marketing solution, you can put your thought leadership content to work for you with less effort than ever before.

Time to win clients over

As a business in a B2B setting, you won’t only be dealing with customers looking for the type of products and services you're offering. You’ll face fellow businesses and brands that might be years ahead of you in the trade. It’s crucial to have the best digital game plan in place.

More than attracting prospects, you need a B2B online marketing strategy that’ll position your business as a trusted authority in your industry. The steps above will help you set up a formidable online presence and win business deals every time. For the best online marketing tools, explore Vodien’s popular suite of online marketing solutions like email marketing, SEO, online directories, and more.