You are saying that you do B2B marketing, yet when asked what sets your strategies apart from B2C, you cannot figure it out—and you
realize that you have not even thought that these two faces of marketing have different needs. Yes, they both need SEO,content, and other marketing techniques, but without the right approach you would not hit your target market. Now, do not wonder if until now your business’ online presence still flops.
There are quite a number of marketers who do not know the difference between B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing strategies and this gets them into a useless position. If you are in B2B, you then have to make sure that you are not barking at the wrong tree. You might be using the consumer marketing approach and it is not going to meet your needs. Now how do B2B and B2C differ from each other?
B2B vs. B2C
Well, B2B is what you call a transaction between businesses. Meaning, the business is between two business owners. Here, the products are not sold to consumers directly, but rather it is purchased in larger quantities by a middleman, which is the target business. The recipient business then distributes the products to the local consumers.
B2C, on the other hand, is the direct transaction between a business and the customers, or end-users. This is the usual kind of business that most people know about. Examples of this are local stores and shops where the consumers transact business with the store.
Getting the right B2B content marketing techniques
Now, knowing clearly how B2B differs from B2C, it is important to find the appropriate strategies for B2B marketing. This applies to online content as well. Since content is a necessary element in online marketing, you better get the right B2B techniques for it.
To help you find out what content marketing strategies work best, here is a list gathered from the recommendations of B2B experts.
1. Connections through social media
In online marketing, social media will never be out of the picture. Whether it is B2B or B2C, you need to target visibility on such sites as a way of advertising your business. In your part, your goal is not to advertise products to end user consumers, but instead you will use social media to build professional relationship with your target business clients. Moreover, visibility on social media can also help secure links for your content marketing outputs.
There are steps that you can do in order to improve your social media visibility and connect to more businesses. For instance, you can get a premium subscription of LinkedIn to improve your business’ Twitter profile visibility even beyond 2nd degree connections. You can also add a Rapportive plugin for Google Chrome or Firefox browsers, which allows you to find social media information of users you are trying to contact through email. Another which can help you is FollowerWonk, which is a tool that can help you find Twitter networks. You may also contact PR media, consultants, or agencies that can help you through PR News directory.
Companies which know how important social media can help them, maximize their presence on sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. An example is Peddinghaus Corp., a structural steel fabrication company, which uses Youtube and Twitter to be active online and connect to their prospect clients.
2. Advertising through video marketing
Another example of how social media can help B2B companies reach out to their target clients is the success of video marketing. Video or digital marketing does not only improve their social media visibility, but it is also an effective strategy to convince these target businesses to get into them.
By just using Youtube and other video posting social media, you can show a basic product demonstration, come up with a series of case studies showing how your products work, and even present the growing status of your company. Through these ways, you can advertise your company, services, or products without spending much on ads.
To make this content marketing strategy work, make sure you apply creativity and different styles depending on your target clients. Your goal is to make this interesting enough to get attention. Then, you just have to use the simple SEO skills to draw traffic to them. If your video content is interesting enough, you will see how they can attract organic traffic in the future and that means more chance of conversion.
This is the strategy used by Boeing, an aerospace company also known for manufacturing military aircraft and jetliners. Their microsite, showing their demo videos and other articles which gained 222,300 views, has been their leading social media way of engaging their wide range of stockholders.
3. Catching the right keywords
Keywords are important part of contents. You got to hit the right keywords to make sure you get the right traffic. Instead of just focusing on the short keywords, it would be better if you now try hitting the long-tail keywords—or the phrases typed down by searchers. Knowing these keywords will help you find a better topic for your content.
In using a keyword, guessing is not an advisable tactic. You better study first what keywords work best to minimize traffic bounce rate. To do this, you can use a keyword referral data. This tool will allow you to see which phrases are searched for by people. Moreover, this can also track the actions of the searchers who found your website through those keywords.
Reputation Enforcement, an ORM company, uses this strategy for their SEO purposes. Before their writers create contents, they first research for their target keywords for a particular time frame. This way, they can make their content rank high on search results.
Final notes
These are just some of the effective B2B online content marketing strategies. B2B marketers have to make sure they are not crossing over to the B2C side or else they would just be wasting their efforts. Moreover, before you choose a strategy, you better study your business’ marketing needs first. Find out which area you need to put more effort on. Is it social media, the quality of content, or your focus?
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