How to Market Your B2B Business

B2B marketing is a tough nut to crack. While B2C sales often come down to reviewing customer personas and following consumer trends, B2B is something else entirely. Why is B2B marketing so hard? After all, you would think that marketing your products and services as a business owner to other business owners would be easier. You’re all in the same boat, right?

Well, not so fast there, young entrepreneur (You may not be young, but let’s pretend because it makes me sound wise.) You’re partially right in your thinking, but you’re also missing some major variables.

You’re Asking for More Than You Realize

For starters, no two business owners or businesses are alike. Everyone has hopes and dreams, and just like your business is your baby, you’re asking another business owner to trust you with their baby.

Moms and dads, you know where we’re going with this, and you’re cringing at the thought.

Put Yourself in Their Shoes

When you hand your baby over to someone, you want them to take care of it as if it were their own. You know how much care you’ve put into building your business, so the idea of someone coming along and wrecking it keeps you up at night.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of any other business you appraoch. What are you doing to instill confidence that you’re up to the taks of handling their baby? How have you demonstrated that you are a trusted authority who knows what to do?

Who Are You Actually Putting First?

Beyond that, you absolutely have to put the customer first. No, we’re not talking about your customers – we’re talking about your customers’ customers. In B2C marketing campaigns, the focus is on the customer because, well, it’s called B2C for a reason. You are marketing directly to the consumer, providing an express lane straight to your products and services.

Center B2B Marketing Around Helping Your Customers’ Customers

In B2B marketing, you might think that you’re trying to build desire for your products and services among your buyers, but you actually want to focus your efforts on showcasing how you will help your clients make more money. This is done by attracting more customers and helping to retain them.

So, instead of trying to market your products and services as desirable for other business owners, you want to focus on how your products and services will help business owners better serve their customers.

If you’ve found yourself having trouble finding a solid B2B marketing strategy, below are some more tips to help you get more mileage out of your local B2B marketing efforts:

Build Strong Long-Term Relationships

B2B marketing is often a long process because it requires building relationships and trust. Going back to what we said earlier, you’re expecting someone to hand over their baby to you. Whatever it is that you provide, your products and services have the ability to make or break someone’s dreams and goals, not to mention their bottom line.

This means that your efforts need to focus on the long term, not a quick transaction. In B2C marketing, there are times when you can make a quick sale, but in B2B transactions, there’s a lot more at stake, so there’s a lot more thought that goes into things.

Consider your own business purchases and subscriptions. You likely don’t spend on things you don’t believe in, and you believe in things because you feel you can trust them. Apply that same approach to your efforts to reach other business owners more effectively.

Food for Thought: How Do You Build Strong Relationships?

To build strong relationships, think about your marketing efforts as dating. In fact, we recently published a blog post about this topic.

Marketing is often about taking your time and building relationships slowly. You don’t go from meeting someone to married in an instant, and you don’t go from landing a lead to making a sale overnight either. Your marketing efforts are the equivalent of courting in the dating world. Take your time and see where things go. - play your cards right, and you might just get lucky.

Utilize Content Marketing & Local SEO

Content marketing is a powerful way to market in the B2B space. By creating fresh, unique, and valuable content, you have the chance to influence decisions while building trust and establishing authority.

Content marketing also works hand-in-hand with SEO to fulfill search engine ranking requirements. In a nutshell, SEO is all about using specific keywords, word placement, and links to help search engines make decisions about where to place websites and web pages in the results brought up for certain search queries.

At Charlotte Content Marketing, we specialize in content strategy development, content writing, video content, podcast production, and SEO. Combined, these specialties can better position your brand in a B2B setting to get noticed and come out on top as the preferred choice among leads in the industries your company serves.

Written content, video content, podcast content, images, infographics, social media posts – all of these are examples of content that can be used in B2B marketing, and you can tie them all together neatly with a content strategy that speaks to the value your brand provides.

Food for Thought: Lean into Local SEO in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Locally, you want to focus your content marketing efforts on local search terms, intent, and interest. Google uses semantics to reach audiences, so make sure to include keyword clusters and related topics in your content.

For example, if you wanted to reach people in Charlotte, NC, for your financial services company, you can talk about your actual financial services but also include semantic keywords like “bank account,” “credit card,” and “finances.” This will help search engines to associate your content with these topics, reaching more leads

Showcase Your Expertise

In keeping with the above, take the time to showcase your expertise. This can be a part of your content strategy as well when you create thought leadership pieces that offer real value. For example, you can write up a review of a new idea in your industry or create content about tips professionals in your industry can use to better serve their customers.

Within this content, take the time to expound upon the benefits of working with your brand and using your products and services. A great example of this is where companies produce digital content for sites like LinkedIn.

Create a LinkedIn Pulse post that offers uncommon advice about something your company excels at. Within this content, make sure to set the problem up so that you already have the solution lined up – your products and services. We have a video podcast about how to use storytelling in your content marketing if you want to learn more.

Form Connections on Social Media

People from all walks of life place value on social proof. If you can demonstrate that others trust your brand, you’re going to have an easier time convincing others to take you seriously. Social media doesn’t have to be a daily part of your B2B marketing strategy, but it should receive attention. I see so many business owners on sites like Facebook and Twitter who haven’t updated their profiles in months or even years. These are wasted opportunities for free B2B marketing.

To use social media effectively in your B2B marketing strategy, engage with both clients and potential clients. What I mean by engagement goes beyond just liking comments – I’m talking about starting and joining conversations.

How to Get Conversations Started With Leads

Log into your business’s social media accounts, and then comment on other brands’ profiles. Add insightful wisdom, and encourage other brands to follow yours. These are the first steps toward calling attention to your brand, but they also present opportunities to get a dialogue going that’s not just about you trying to sell something.

Show that your company is genuinely interested in the topics that matter to leads in your industry. Provide free advice and guidance on the things you’re an expert at. This will help get the conversation moving, and if something doesn’t pan out, you have a whole Internet to explore.

Partner with Complementary Businesses for Events

Another way to market your business in the B2B world is to partner with complementary businesses for events, both traditional and virtual. Find businesses that share your goals and find ways to join forces for the greater good. In these situations, you aren’t trying to market anything, but you are building goodwill in your industry. Plus, you can blog about your efforts and create podcasts or even live-stream events for exposure.

Measure Your Success & Adapt to Change

Lastly, keep track of your successes and adapt to challenges and change. It can be disheartening to feel like you aren’t making headway if you haven’t been able to gain traction in your B2B marketing efforts, but you may be missing the forest from the trees.

I recommend taking a breather every few weeks to write out all that you’ve accomplished. Make note of all of the relationships you formed, all that you’ve learned, and all of the growth you’ve experienced. You may find that you’re further ahead than you originally thought.

There’s No Such Thing as Overnight Success

Part of my thinking behind writing this post is that I’ve gotten a bit tired of the current get-rich-quick mentality on the web. Every single day, I see budding entrepreneurs fall prey to slick schemes and promises from grifters. In a tough economy, it can be easy to fall victim to dreams of overnight success, but that’s not how the world works.

When you take your time, focus on your goals, form meaningful relationships, market your business using valuable content, and measure your success, you’re bound to get where you want to be. Marketing is all about playing the long game if you want to build a solid foundation.

Contact Charlotte Content Marketing to Learn How We Can Help

If you’ve found that your B2B marketing efforts have simply gotten to be too much or you feel your content marketing strategy has fallen flat, let our experts help. Schedule your no-obligation consultation, and let’s have a chat about your goals. Call (704) 323-6762 or email us at hello@charlottecontentmarketing.com. You can also reach our content marketing agency in Charlotte through our convenient contact form below.