Best Practices for B2B Companies and How to Convey Them on the Web

June, 23 2017

Marketing a B2B company can sometimes be a challenge. When you’re trying to get another company to buy your products or services, it isn’t quite the same as marketing to a consumer. If you want to make a strong connection online, you need to know the correct way to portray your B2B business.

There are a few best practices any B2B company should follow when promoting themselves online. Here are seven of the ones you need to know.

1. Consider Your Target Audience

No matter how great your product or service is, it isn’t going to be right for every company out there. While you may want to make your pool of target audience members as big as possible, this may actually hurt your chances of developing strong connections.

Take a moment to consider who you would like to work with. What kind of companies are you looking to attract? Who would be your ideal client? When you understand your target audience, you can create a marketing strategy unique to their needs.

2. Know Your Decision-Maker

Although the company would purchase your products, there is an actual individual in charge of making the decisions. This means many of the B2C marketing tactics can apply if done correctly. If you don’t know who your decision-maker is, then you won’t be able to market to them.

Do some research to find out who might be in charge of making purchasing decisions at the companies you’re trying to reach. Once you better understand who you’re targeting, you can create your online promotion strategy around their behaviors or needs.

3. Define Your Goals

With any kind of promotion, you need to define your expectations. What are you looking to gain from this campaign? The same applies when you’re marketing on the web. If you don’t know what you’re trying to do, how can you know if you’ve been successful?

Consider what goals you’d like to achieve. Whether it’s bringing new leads to your website, gaining new followers on social media or selling more of a particular product or service, your goals will influence how you promote online.

4. Understand the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey with a B2B sale isn’t as straightforward as it is with a consumer. With a consumer, you only need to convince one person to purchase. In a company, there may be many different people that need to be convinced to sign off. This can make the buyer’s journey much longer.

Take a moment to understand the path the buyer must take to buy. When promoting your services or products online, you want to be sure you reach them at each stage of this purchasing process. This means you’ll need to target different online promotion strategies, such as blogging, PPC advertising, social media and more.

5. Focus on Building Relationships

B2B purchases are made entirely on trust. Because B2B deals typically involve high price tags or long commitments, companies don’t just purchase products or services on a whim. This means if you want to make a sale, you need to first build a relationship.

Building a relationship with a company can take a bit of time, so don’t try to rush the process. Focus on figuring out the needs of the company you’re trying to make a deal with and offering it solutions that can solve its problems.

6. Provide a Customized Service or Product

When selling a consumer product, it’s OK to offer just a few options of the same thing. When you’re offering a product or service that is going to be used by a business, though, you don’t want to take this same one-size-fits-all approach. Each company will have different needs, meaning they will need unique versions of your products or services.

Offering a customization option, like FDM4, is a great way to attract more attention online. By offering exactly what your customer needs to make business easier, you can have an easier time convincing them to purchase from you.

7. Create Quality Content

In the online promotion world, everything revolves around the content you create. If you’re creating low-quality content that doesn’t resonate with your clients or customers, you’re going to struggle to get any new leads from your online marketing strategy. However, if you create interesting, engaging and highly shareable content, you can have new leads pouring in.
Focus on creating the content your audience wants or needs. Consider what questions they want to have answered, what problems they may be facing or what they may be interested in learning. You can then use this information to create a diverse mix of content that attracts and holds your audience’s attention, including blogs, videos, infographics and more.

Promoting your company on the web is important. As more marketing is becoming digital, you need to understand how to convey your products and services online. However, the best way to make a connection and gain attention is to put your audience members first.

When promoting your B2B products or services online, remember you’re still trying to make a human interaction. Just because the company will become your client doesn’t mean you can forget about the actual people you will be working with. Considering their needs can help you land more sales.

Use these seven tips the next time you create an online marketing strategy for your B2B business.