If you’re in B2B, you create or sell products or services that are used by other businesses. You might be a manufacturer, a wholesaler, a SaaS business, an accountancy firm, a law firm…
In fact, it’s probably quicker to say what you’re not: you’re not a retailer who sells directly to consumers.
Opportunities can be more limited to access the right people or get in the door as a supplier. With varied stakeholders to appease — each with their own opinions, styles and approaches — being seen as the ‘right fit’ can be more of a challenge.
From number crunching to excellent storytelling, there are many ways businesses can sell their offering to other businesses. Let’s look at some of the best examples.
Let your data do the talking
What do businesses love most? Well, making money. It’s their raison d'être.
If your marketing campaigns can harness the data proving your value as a business — the real insight into the benefits of what you’re offering — then you’re in with a good chance of catching the attention of your target audience(s).
Furnishing your target audience with facts and figures is a great way to land your messages. They are easy to consume and carry a natural weight of authenticity.
Build up a portfolio of impressive statistics that hammer home your business’ key USPs. What statistics showcase the value you’re adding for customers? Points for doing so as creatively as possible.
Data can mean many things — if you sell printers, it might be pages per minute. If you’re in SaaS, it might be time saved with your product, or the amount of customers you’re protecting. If you’re a network service provider, it might be your average full-fibre broadband rollout time.
If you’re a digital marketing agency (!), it might be the number of clients you’ve worked with, the amount of revenue you generated for your client, or the amount of enquiries as a result of your last campaign.
Get in the habit of proving your value as a business with data, constantly. It’ll stand you in good stead as a B2B marketer. If it’s feasible, this could even mean tailoring your data…
B2B marketing case study: Shopify Wrapped (for advertisers)
You know when it’s Spotify Wrapped time — once every year, our social media feeds are flooded with people’s personal song and genre picks of the year. The streaming giant has played the marketing game so well that it’s become almost like a holiday in its own right.
Consumers love it. This content is uniquely tailored, fun, highly shareable and a massive tick in the ‘brand connection’ box.
But, did you know that they do the same thing for advertisers too? This maintains engagement and understanding of the benefits among existing audiences with actionable data. As well as helping those in B2B to prove the value of their investment to higher-ups, it acts as a strong draw for those seeking a new way to reach these audiences.
This ticks the box for credibility and proof points of the service they provide to advertiser. It also hits another major marketing tick box — personalisation. Although the new clients are not yet signed up, it shows the lengths that the app will go to hyper-personalise the results to suit their client needs (and satisfy their boards when it’s time to answer for spend).
The takeaway here for brands of all sizes, is the need to maximise data capture at every point for future use.
To sell it, tell it — never too old for a story
We mean building your brand story, as well as a campaign with a narrative to buy into. With this, you begin to build the emotional connection we so often seek with consumers in the B2C space.
‘But we’re being our most professional selves here’, we hear you cry. Yes, this is true, but whether the end user, or a board, the chance to build trust through a human or emotional connection very much still exists.
It may be tempting to talk up the differences between B2B and B2C, but ultimately every B2B brand has a human decision maker — so you still need to build that connection. What works for B2C brands can also chime with B2B audiences, even if they’re an R&D team, an administrator, a board of directors.
But you’ll want to place the emotional emphasis on those things relating to the jobs they do — such as costly mistakes with processes, cybersecurity, recruitment. These are opportunities to show your audiences you know and understand the challenges they face in their roles. And more importantly, that you have the solutions.
B2B marketing case study: IMB, Every Second Counts
This is an excellent example of combining a strong brand legacy with an impressive narrative. ‘Every Second Counts’ adopted a multi-channel approach with a story that showcases the challenges of the audience — and their solution — in one slick, interactive and memorable way.
The campaign focused on the importance of global companies preparing for the increasing threat of cyberattacks.
Utilising video across social media, outcomes (both positive and negative) of real-time events were showcased . The consumer — in this case, large businesses — were shown the cost and risk of failing to prepare. The overriding message: the speed to recovery, and the manner in which IBM can provide an optimum solution to this costly problem.
Catch ‘em all — with a high-performance website and brand
You’d be amazed by how many B2B brands are happy with a website or brand identity that just about ‘does the job’.
It may be resting on laurels, a lack of understanding or simply the fact that some B2B environments have more traditional decision makers who don’t place the same emphasis on the importance of a responsive, smooth website experience.
Yes, levels of website traffic are typically lower for B2B — you might not be relying on carefully coaxing e-commerce sales from every user. However, if anything, this reveals the importance of converting the visitors you do receive.
Above all, a good B2B website is a chance to stand out in a crowd of complacency.
Now, as much as we’d love to, we can’t go into every facet or element behind a successful website design and build, but they include…
Branding: creates a unique identity that distinguishes you and helps you customers to remember you.
User experience: makes it as easy and seamless as possible for users to find what they want and covert, with no confusion or unnecessary barriers. Even though many B2B users research and enquire on their desktops, don’t forget the importance of mobile!
Page optimisation: not only makes your pages more informative for users, but helps search engines like Google to understand, index and rank your website for searches your customers are performing.
Website architecture: a clear website structure is optimal for SEO, and just makes sense for users.
Quality content: makes your website more useful and engaging for users, and helps to boost your search engine optimisation.
Trust signals: awards, reviews, industry accreditations and stats (like we mentioned earlier) all reassure would-be enquirers that it’s you they want to partner with.
Unique imagery: users are better than you might think at spotting generic stock imagery. Imagery of your own business — people, products, premises — allows you to start telling your own story and brings out your own brand personality.
Technical debt (or lack thereof): ensures a faster, cleaner website that’s easier to develop and is free of bugs.
Core Web Vitals: like site speed. These ensure good user experience, which Google rewards.
Accessibility: navigation, contrast, fonts, CTA forms, buttons, alt text… there are many aspects to accessible web design, which all make your website easier to use — a particularly important consideration for B2B businesspeople, who may be older.
Further reading:8 key qualities, features and must-haves for a good website design
B2B marketing case study: A clean bill of health for DDH
Now, we loathe to toot our own trumpets, but our website for DDH is a fine example of website design for a B2B brand. DDH is a retailer for specialist healthcare equipment, like medical apparatus, hospital beds, care home beds and mobility aids.
We replaced their dated website with one that meets the requirement for a new, secure payment gateway and a range of custom features and integrations for product, stock and order management.
Not sure how to get a handle on your B2B marketing strategy?
Our talented, award-winning team covers all digital marketing specialisms — social media, branding, PPC, SEO, content, PR, email, e-commerce and web development — and have worked with B2B brands across all sectors and industries.
Take a look at some of our work, and iif you like what you see, get in touch today.
Fancy a good ol' chat about the values of marketing to your business?
Drop Us a LinePost by
Project
