What are the main problems that B2B selling businesses face? What mistakes do sellers make on the way to their ultimate goal – to close a sale? Companies in this sector work with professional buyers who are committed to making only the best deals. They need to be convinced that the B2B product or service is the best on the market.

Add to this a longer sales cycle, a chain of necessary documents that usually accompany each transaction, communications within the company and with clients, and the specifics of working with legal entities – and you get what a B2B business faces every day.

In this article, we will sort out common problems and make life easier for companies engaged in the B2B segment.

B2B Marketing Strategy

B2B is a rather difficult area in terms of marketing. Most of the strategies that are successfully implemented in the consumer sector do not apply. B2B is not about how to sell your product; it’s about how to build a long-term and trusting relationship with a client.

A marketing strategy is a set of measures to achieve certain goals:

• Segmentation of the target audience and promotion of goods/services in selected segments
• Working out a portrait of the ideal representatives of the target audience and understanding their problems and needs
• Development of proposition value and on the positioning of the company
• Selection of specific channels and resources for interacting with the target audience
• Continuous analysis and optimization of each of the selected channels
• Analysis of the customer base, sales promotions, and retention of current customers
• Competent management of the assortment of products, expansion of the line of market offers, etc.

This list is far from complete, and it is worthwhile to understand that B2B marketing is not a one-time promotion but painstaking, continuous work.

Content strategy

Quality content helps you sell. Poor quality content wastes time and resources and can potentially harm a company’s reputation. The bad news is that it is not always easy to tell one from the other.  Some typical content issues for B2B are:

• You don’t know what to write about
• No resources to create content
• Inconsistent posting
• Content irrelevant to the interests of the target audience

The types of content that work:

• Informational content
• Explanatory content
• Educational content
• Expert content
• Selling content
• Entertaining content

Lead generation

So you’ve introduced people to your brand and brought them to your site. The next step is to convert those visitors into leads.

B2B lead generation is an ideal tool for building a base for a sales funnel. Most often, sales are multi-stage. Decisions are made by a group of people over a long period of time. In this case, warming up the lead is crucial, no one will conclude large deals through the form on the landing page.

The main goal of B2B lead generation is to get as many leads as possible. This approach significantly increases the acquisition budget and also allows for experimental campaigns. Lead generation includes many tools and advertising channels that you can use.

There are a huge number of B2B lead generation methods and techniques, which can be grouped into three categories:

1. Communication with a target audience – This method includes:

• Telemarketing – calls to potential customers
• Individual meetings
• Event marketing – organizing and conducting special events that allow you to collect contacts of potential customers.

2. The internet – Most often used in digital marketing. When using it, the emphasis is on creating quality content that allows you to get contacts of potential customers. Clients are attracted through:

• Corporate website of the company
• Landing pages (landing) – creating several landing pages and organize lead generation for a specific product or service
• Targeted display advertising
• Providing unique, interesting, and exclusive information in exchange for personal contacts
• Social networks, forums, and blogs

3. Direct marketing – Provides maximum personalization and interaction with potential customers. This method includes email and SMS.

Communication

The complexity and specificity of B2B products significantly narrow the range of communication channels and technologies that B2B marketers can use. The majority of clients prefer to get information from search engines and social networks. Therefore, we recommend communicating with customers via the internet, or even better through intranet software. This is the most convenient solution for everybody. You will have an easy way to communicate, a cloud-based data exchange, effortless files exchange, etc.

Key Metrics for B2B Campaigns – What and How to Measure

Analytics is at the heart of any modern campaign. There are many metrics you can track and KPIs are specific to each B2B business. It is important that they help evaluate the result of marketing activities. You should know that Click-Through Rate (CTR), Cost Per Click (CPC), and Cost Per Mille (CPM) are not suitable performance metrics for B2B companies. Focus on metrics such as Conversion rate (CR), Cost Per Lead (CPL), Cost Per Action (CPA), Return on Investment (ROI) and Customer lifetime value.

Conclusion

Attracting new customers is beneficial to any company but it’s more difficult in the B2B sector. The time, cost, and risks are much greater, so the road to achieving victories can be harder and longer. Therefore, be sure to use the above tips – and your chances of a successful business will increase.