Digital News South Africa

B2B digital marketing tools and tips

B2B marketing is a tricky endeavour. Above-the-line advertising is ineffective, and it can be incredibly difficult to reach the right decision-makers in companies.

That's where digital marketing fills the gap and provides some targeted marketing techniques that reach the right people at the right time. Even so, though, one needs to carefully consider the right approach to get results. Gunshot advertising simply won't work.

Start with your website

Most B2B companies that come to us have a website designed by some developers that don't understand their business. They put together a Wordpress template that looks decent and expect to get results out of it. But it never works out well, because thought wasn't put into the right messages, design, layout and call-to-actions. Even sinking money into advertising doesn't produce results, because the people arriving on the site aren't convinced and never click the right buttons.

Image via Pixabay
Image via Pixabay

The core of any digital marketing is the website - driving traffic to it and getting valuable leads. Start by thinking carefully about what motivates people to want your service, what message will engage them, and what ideas they are likely to buy into. Once you've narrowed these down, make them prominent and introduce a variety of carefully placed call-to-actions. And, perhaps most importantly, test different methods to optimise your results.

Long-term engagement is key

B2B purchasing decisions are never made spur of the moment. Most potential clients will browse around a little, get to know your company and services, and go through some internal processes before contacting you. This is where content marketing comes in. It drives long-term engagement and interest in your brand, with the ultimate goal of keeping your product top of mind for that all-important decision making moment.

Our business is a great example of this. Most of our clients visited our website many months before contacting us, and many signed up to our newsletter and regularly check our blog. Over time, they come to understand what sets us apart and why they should be using us.

Make use of blogs, social media, and email marketing techniques to educate potential clients and develop a relationship and trust before they contact you. The perception of the B2B company as an expert in the field is incredibly powerful.

Plan and optimise

Just like the website, advertising and content marketing requires some planning and thought. You should never throw out some random adverts or blog posts and expect quick results. Some thought and planning goes a long way to ensuring that you get results and avoids wasted money.

And once you've planned the ideal strategy, make use of digital tracking to understand how your market is engaging with your brand and what methods are effective.

I like to use the example of one of our financial services clients (which I won't name). They were having a few issues with their image because of some misteps in the service they provided and needed an avenue to improve this. LinkedIn is an ideal platform for them, because it reaches their target market daily. By simply introducing a LinkedIn follow button at the top of their website, we increased their following from 45 people to over 900 in under two weeks. Now they use LinkedIn to engage their followers and put forward a progressive company image.

Read more tips here.

About Adiv Maimon

Adiv Maimon is the Head of Product at Continuon, the social media analytics tool that identifies, and segments, influencers to help brands create real relationships that deliver business benefit. A mechatronic engineer, Adiv has crafted a successful career using technology to create real value for brands and businesses. Adiv is an entrepreneur who founded and grew, a highly successful marketing company, before exiting. Deeply skilled in User Experience Design, Adiv is passionate about Software As A Service and innovation.
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