The Ultimate B2B Marketing Guide + Strategies

What is B2B marketing?

B2B stands for Business-to-Business marketing and it’s a strategy that covers everything you do to get other businesses to buy from your business. It’s how your business promotes itself to sell stuff to other companies that need your stuff.

When your B2B marketing strategy works, your target businesses will know two things:

You exist
Your product has the most value for their ROI

B2B marketing is one full half of the digital marketing world today.

B2B is not B2C

The other half of digital marketing is called B2C marketing (Business-to-Consumers), and that’s when businesses promote their goods directly to individual shoppers (without using a go-between).

Amazon is the penultimate platform B2C businesses use to promote their products to purchasers (consumers). If that’s what your company does, you’re in the wrong article.

B2B Marketing Examples (Businesses That Sell to Other Businesses)

SaaS Companies (Software as a Service)

Businesses need software for everything today:

Paperless workflow software that tracks business processes (BPO) from the mailroom to accounting (like Application Xtender)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software (like Salesforce)
Social media scheduling (like Buffer)
Team collaboration apps (like Slack)
Project Management tools (like Asana)

If you sell enterprise software, your customers are businesses.

Marketing Agencies

So weird, right? We’re a marketing agency talking about marketing using ourselves as an example of a business that sells services to other businesses. Shoulder shrug 🤷‍♀️

Marketing agencies make other companies money by taking their brands online and showing them off. From startups to business goliaths, marketing agencies improve landing pages, increase conversion rates, boost search ranking s, and get more new customers and clients into buyer journey funnels.

B2B Businesses Ultimately Sell to People

People in buyer positions buy from people in sales positions.

B2B marketing targets purchasers who buy on behalf of their business (they don’t buy a B2B product or service for themselves).

B2B customers look at their company’s needs, their potential ROI, your level of industry expertise, and your reputation.

How B2B Marketing Works

As a B2B marketer, your target audience will be business execs and procurement officers. The marketing process is complex, the price tag is high, and the graphs change month by month over years.

The Buyer Journey in a Nutshell

Awareness

The buyer realizes they have a problem they need to fix. They start by labeling this problem and add some question marks they know they need to answer.

The buyer does some research online with a Google search and a social media search. As the marketer, you want to pop up on their screen because you’ve tailored your awareness-stage material to their buyer profile.

Consideration Stage

The buyer has clearly defined their problem and has investigated what companies out there can solve it. They’ve got a small list, and you’re on it. They are considering you, which means they are comparing you to the competition.

Decision Stage

The research legwork is done and it’s time for the buyer to review options and decide on a winner. Reach out with a free assessment, audit, consultation, demos, or free trial.

What B2B Best Practices Drive the Highest ROI?

There are only two things you need to execute a brilliant B2B marketing strategy and turn prospects into purchasers:

The where (your communication channels)
The what (how you deliver your message)

Pick Your Marketing Channels to Reach Your Audience

Where do your potential customers hang out? Connect with them there.

Channel #1: Social Media + Ads

Where are your target businesses active socially?

Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? YouTube?

Channel #2: Website

Your website is the face of your company. It’s where you educate (with your blogs), convince (with your testimonials and reviews), collect email addresses (with your amazing offers and downloadables), showcase your products and services (with demos), and sell your stuff.

Channel #3: Email Marketing

Email marketing has a bonkers-high ROI and is widely regarded as one of the best ways to sell your stuff.

Nail Your Message with B2B Content Marketing

Your B2B marketing efforts prove your expertise, educate your customers, and inform the decision-makers who make the purchasing decision.

Brilliant B2B Marketing Strategies Start with Research

You can’t hope to generate more leads and bring in new business if you don’t do your research.

Quickstart Your Research by Asking These Ten Questions:

What’s going on in your marketplace?
What are your competitors doing?
What do the companies that buy from you look like?
What’s a unique angle that will win them over?
What’s your best niche?
Do you have a kickass website with tailored B2B landing pages?
Have you diligently worked your SEO?
How does your SEM game look?
Does your social media rock?
Are you testing all of these things and optimizing the variables that come up short of amazing?

B2B Strategy: Creativity Meets Budget

You’ve pegged your channels, you’ve done your research, and now you’re ready to roll. Focus on your content marketing strategy.