Finding Your B2B Treasure
At the beginning of the year we’re usually bombarded with predictions and ‘trends’ for the year ahead. With Q1 2020 coming to a close, which ones are actually relevant to a B2B marketing? And which ones are a jackpot find?
People are your priority
Whether you specialise in B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer) marketing, it will always be about understanding people and understanding your audience. We can be introduced to hundreds of trends and tactics, but people’s views and opinions are what tend to change. So, how can you ensure that people are satisfied with your product or service offering?
94% of B2B buyers conduct research online prior to making a business decision or purchase. Instead of creating extremely methodological or tasteless content, you must remember that even though you’re working Business to Business, you’re still targeting people; not businesses. Generate content that people can engage with and respond to – let your creativity take the wheel and speak to your audience through polls, quizzes, infographics and videos.
Events
Hosting events is something that, as a B2B marketing agency, is extremely beneficial for building new and valuable business relationships and contacts. With the current climate, your next live event may seem like a long way off, but there’s no reason why you can’t go online with podcasts and webinars to share information and insight.
In a previous blog post, we discussed why hosting an event could be the key to your B2B marketing mix – you can read the blog here to gain more insight on the potential hosting events can have on ROI, new business relationships and brand building.
Out With the Old
Digital marketing has a difficult time functioning properly without an informative, engaging website. So, after having the same site for three years, our team decided that it was time to have a refresh. By using our own research, hard data and feedback, we were able to determine what needed to change and improve our site and content accordingly. We sought to receive observations from people we work closely with, whether this was close friends or clients, to fully understand what other people thought when they first visited the website. But what kind of questions did we ask?
The questions were pretty self-explanatory and nothing too difficult for people to answer. As a team, we knew that we needed to keep the new site on brand and something that represents us as a company and our tight-knit, knowledgeable team.
- Is it clear what we do from our site? Could this be clearer? If so, how?
- Does our website effectively reflect us as a company/brand?
- Is the language accessible?
- What do you think it would be like to work here from what you can gauge from the website?
This information gave us insight that we wouldn’t have necessarily thought of as a team and getting collaborative feedback from clients or friends is something that will always work in favour of any business.
Tech, but the right amount
Because B2B marketing is fuelled by building brand awareness, engaging with target audiences and driving interest, no trends or technology will be able to single-handedly assist operating our entire marketing set – or if they can, budgets usually come second to getting in the way. However, this gives us a kick to try new trends, programmes, software and techniques to see what works for our business, if any at all.
Right now, it’s safe to say that, although they are used to maximise business potentials, companies are too overloaded with new technologies being implemented, making it difficult for individuals to make use of it all, which is why free trials, or even online tutorials of certain mediums can assist you when making decisions.
Many ‘trends’ aren’t necessarily new technologies to help with marketing, but rather going back to traditional, purposeful B2B marketing. If you’d like to go on a marketing treasure hunt with our team and discuss what would work for your company, get in touch today.