In recent years, technological advances have significantly impacted the business landscape in which organisations operate.
To remain competitive, your business needs to ensure you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and opportunities in the digital landscape. That being said, immediately jumping on the bandwagon with the newest innovations isn’t always going to be a great decision to make.
You need to weigh up different options, assess their potential benefits to your business and make an informed plan of action. Every trend that comes around isn’t going to be right for your company and, if you try to invest in too many, this may simply end up being costly and time-consuming. Integrating new processes, educating staff, providing training for new systems and the like all takes time. Thus, such factors need to be taken into account when you’re considering new endeavours.
However, if you fail to adapt to changes, your could be missing out on the chance to improve efficiencies, boost your return on investment, drive more leads and increase customer satisfaction. It’s all about finding the balance between innovation and reliable, long-term solutions that will continue to deliver results in the future.
Whether you’re looking to improve your current B2B digital marketing strategy, or are starting fresh, the following components are almost always crucial.
- Conduct Market Research
Before commencing with any of your B2B digital marketing efforts, establishing clear direction across all organisational levels is crucial. In order to do this, you need to first conduct market research hand gain an enhanced understanding of not only your target audience, but also the business landscape you’re operating in.
When completing market research, it’s important to refer to numerous sources and, if you have the resources, you may even decide to conduct your own tests. By doing this, you can establish a deep understanding of whom you’re trying to reach and their common characteristics, providing you with valuable insights that can guide your future B2B digital marketing campaigns.
When completing this stage, consider the following:
- Who are you trying to target? By determining your different audiences, you can develop ‘customer personas’ that can then be specifically targeted depending on their unique needs, expectations and the like.
- What do your audiences dislike and what are their pain points? How can you help them overcome issues of this nature?
- What are the buying habits of your prospects and how much are they willing to spend?
- How do your audience communicate and which communication channels would be the most effective in reaching them? For instance, they may be particularly active on Facebook or LinkedIn.
However, the benefits of market research don’t stop at improving your customer targeting. By improving your understanding of consumers, you can ensure you’re adequately meeting their needs and, in some cases, even predict what they’ll want in future. Thus, equipped with comprehensive information, make sure you’re meeting customer’s needs and boost satisfaction.
- B2B Digital Marketing & Optimising Your Website
When prospects search for your business or an offering you provide, they’ll likely end up on your website. It’s your online hub and, thus, ensuring it adequately represents your level of professionalism and expertise is crucial in B2B marketing.
It’s important to update your website relatively regularly as, if it hasn’t been touched in five years, the content and design is likely out-dated. Thus, making small changing every so often and, occasionally, updating the entire website is important. This will help you ensure your content and design remains relevant, engaging and current. Technology is moving fast and, if you fail to update your website accordingly, this could reflect poorly on your brand.
How to Design an Exceptional Website
When designing your website, there are various things you will need to take into account. Many organisations get carried away with adding exciting features, including a number of pop ups and effects throughout. However, if you intend to go down this path you’ll need to be careful, as there’s a very fine line between engaging and overwhelming. In fact, including too many features may even take away from your content, meaning that consumers will leave your digital domain without finding what they were searching for.
Your main focus ought to be finding a balance between usability and an engaging, visually appealing website. While your layout may be great design-wise, does it make your site confusing or difficult to navigate? If so, regardless of how nice your website looks, consumers will likely have a hard time finding what they’re after. However, if you just include large paragraphs of text and add few design features, you run the risk of creating a boring, unengaging website that doesn’t get prospects excited about your brand and offering.
Of course, it’s also important to make sure that your website is also secure and has fast load times. In fact, a recent poll found that 40% of internet users will leave a site if it take more than three seconds to load. Thus, even if you’ve created an incredible website, if it doesn’t load quickly enough, customers will likely disengage and abandon your digital domain before they’ve even seen what you’ve got to offer.
More and more users are accessing websites from their mobile devices so, if your website isn’t responsive to smaller screens, you’ll likely fail to reach a significant portion of your audience. Websites that aren’t compatible with smaller screens won’t show properly and, thus, aren’t easy for users to navigate and understand.
If you’re in need of a new website, but aren’t sure where to start, speak with a B2B marketing agency today.
- Incorporating SEO in Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy
You’ve got a brilliant website, but if your prospects can’t find it online, you won’t even have the chance to start getting the results you desire.
This is where search engine optimisation comes into play, as it helps you get your webpages higher in Google. Thus, when individuals are looking for the product or service you offer, they’re far more likely to find your brand, discover what you’ve got to offer and convert into a valuable lead. With more visibility, you’re able to reach a larger pool of people and, ultimately, have more opportunities to attract new leads.
There are various tactics that organisations can employ to boost their position in Google’s search rankings. At the heart of search engine optimisation is content creation. However, it’s not just about creating as much content as you can and hoping for the best. The content you’re putting out needs to be highly targeted, focusing on specific keywords and offering real value to readers. If it appears spamming, includes plagiarised text or the like, Google’s algorithm will pick up on this and, consequently, your ranking will be negatively impacted.
In addition to this, internal and external linking is crucial. Internal linking shows that your content is all intertwined and relevant on your website, providing valuable connections between different concepts or offerings you discuss.
External linking is when different websites link to your domain, referencing information you’ve provided and showing that it’s incredibly relevant and beneficial. This can, in turn, help boost your position in Google’s search results. However, it’s important not to go overboard, as if you include too many links on a single page, this may appear ‘spammy’ and be negatively received by Google’s algorithm.
Want to get more external links, but not sure where to begin? A great way to get more backlinks to your website is to contact writers from other domains that have a regular blog, offering to write a guest post for them. While this can be relatively time-consuming, if you have the resources and time it can be a great way to improve your ranking.
- Social Media & B2B Digital Marketing
If you’re yet to get active on social media, the time to act is now. Social media has given businesses a brilliant opportunity to develop meaningful, personal relationships with their customers and prospects.
You can interact directly with customers or potential consumers, answering any queries they have and engaging in relevant conversations. This shows individuals that you care about improving their experience, while also giving them more memorable, value-driven interactions with your brand. This can, in turn, help you build lasting relationships, establish brand communities, improve engagement, boost loyalty and generate more referrals.
In addition to this, you can share updates and ‘behind the scenes’ insights into your business. This puts a face to your brand, helping you build a strong presence in the market and contributing to your brand personality. You can share your business’ values, all the while demonstrating your capabilities and providing users with relevant information.
When it comes to B2B digital marketing, LinkedIn is often the most effective medium. This is because LinkedIn is a social media platform that is focused on user’s careers. Thus, they’re typically in a business mindset, rather than a personal one.
For more information, speak with a B2B marketing agency. They can assist you in developing your B2B marketing strategy, giving you expert guidance and advice.
