In the next year, digital transformation will continue to have a significant impact on B2B marketing. To effectively generate interest and reach buyers who are increasingly focused on digital channels and personalised content, B2B companies will need to embrace these marketing trends.
New business leads are the lifeblood of commercial enterprises. Therefore, it is critical you do everything you can to ensure your marketing campaign is focused on attracting prospects and building trust.
We’ve taken an in-depth look at the B2B lead generation best practices that are proven to deliver. Here are our top must-do activities that will help your business.
Sounds obvious, but most companies don’t take the time to do in-depth research about their buyers. It’s vital to consider the issues that keep them awake at night. What do they search for online when they need help?
Review the questions your sales team get asked by prospects regularly. This is a great source of information and will help you create a killer list of keywords and phrases to use in your digital marketing campaigns.
When you truly understand your buyers’ behaviours and issues you will be able to develop and communicate the right messages at the right time. This creates positive experiences and builds trust for long term partnerships.
Content marketing is one of the most effective and budget-friendly methods to increase your website traffic and convert more leads. It’s a great way of being discovered in the search engines. When done well it optimises your web page position in the search engine results pages. Appropriate content marketing also improves your website visitors’ return rates.
Highly valuable types of in-depth content that build trust and generate interest include original research, case studies and white papers. These are perhaps the best performing content when it comes to delivering more conversions for your business.
At Leapfrog, we highly recommend the use of long-form blogs (2,000+ words) to match with search intent. This drives more conversions through the likes of internal links and on-page call-to-actions.
A large part of helping a website to rank through content marketing revolves around keyword research and optimising your content to match search terms. The aim is to provide a service that your target audience is searching for.
In 2022 original research is likely to become even more important with buyers increasing looking at businesses original content when making buying decisions. Simply writing posts to generate traffic may no longer be enough. Original content has become a trust marker for buyers and research provides early value. Information needs to be helpful to encourage buyers to investigate the brand further or get in touch with the sales team.
At the end of the day, it’s all about people. Businesses just want to hook up with suppliers that they like and trust. They’re looking for people like themselves who understand their challenges, who have the experience and knowledge to deliver what they need for their business.
To build trust with these people you need to educate, inform and solve their problems. Everything from your website to your e-newsletter, your digital PR to your social media posts must have relevant and valuable content. Content that answers prospects’ questions, building confidence and trust that your business is the right one to partner with.
Video remains the most popular content type. Research predicts that by 2022 video content will account for 82% of all internet traffic. Therefore, to compete, it’s important to create impactful videos so your content doesn’t drown in the sea of digital information.
The quality of the content created on a website’s pages and blog posts is only one part of a website SEO strategy, the other is technical SEO. Search engines are regularly indexing and crawling websites to look for updated content that improves the search experience. Technical SEO will make sure these crawlers are having a swift and smooth journey across your website. It encompasses both on-page and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is the practice of optimising web pages for specific keywords to improve search visibility and traffic. Aligning page-specific elements like title tags, headings, content, and internal links with keywords is a crucial part of it.
Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of your website to boost your ranking and visibility within search engine response pages. The aim is to improve the appearance and perception of your site by showing it is full of trustworthy, credible, authoritative content. You can achieve this by receiving inbound links from other sites that have great authority.
The search engines are always looking for ways to deliver better results to their users and local listings have been a major development in delivering this. Google Business Profile, Bing Local and others have been created to connect local businesses with local customers.
Has your business claimed its local listings? If not, now’s the time to do so otherwise you could be missing out big time. And while you’re at it, make sure your listings are complete and optimised. Here’s a free tool to discover if you’ve claimed your listings: moz.com/local/search (it will tell you how complete your listings are too).
With fierce competition to appear at the top of the first page of Google’s and other search engine’s search results, Google Ads remains an important part of B2B marketing.
Historically known as pay-per-click (PPC), Google Search Ads are a cost-effective way to drive highly targeted traffic to your website. Plus, the great advantage of PPC is that you set the daily budget and the results are totally measurable, so you don’t have to waste money on something that doesn’t work.
More targeted and personalised paid social media advertising is a likely growing trend. Many platforms such as LinkedIn now offer targeting tools with extremely fine levels of detail so they can deliver niche content to specific audiences.
If you’ve never tried Google Ads before, it’s worth trialling a test run. For Google Ads, a three-month test is usually adequate to establish if it works for your business. A word of warning though, Google Ads Search is complex to set up and develop properly so it is best not to try and fly solo with this – seek professional help.
The integration of online marketing with offline publicity campaigns such as PR, trade show and event marketing, and print advertising is essential for the success of B2B lead generation. It helps to build strong company profiles, enhances brand awareness and industrial standing.
Traditional PR is a great way to build your company’s reputation. It is about getting your brand name in print and on the digital screen via press releases, case studies and thought pieces in the trade, local, national and international media.
Every way you communicate with your target audience is PR. It is, therefore, critical to control your communication by creating a clear B2B PR strategy. This will optimise the success of all of your PR activities and campaigns.
Your own, targeted email list is potentially one of your most valuable assets. Producing an e-newsletter enables you to help your prospects by giving them handy tips and answers to the questions that cause them the most headaches in their work.
A regular e-newsletter is a great way to build relationships with customers and prospects. Not only will you be helping them, but you’ll be informing them about your business, gaining their trust, and keeping your brand front of mind.
Email marketing has consistently been one of the most popular and effective B2B marketing strategies. 50% of B2B marketers have stated that email marketing is the best tactic for generating leads with the highest return on investment. So it’s no surprise that 87% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content.
When it comes to B2B email marketing performance statistics the latest findings from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) show:
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased people’s usage of social media, and this has led to the growth of not just e-commerce but social commerce as well. Social commerce involves the use of social media to sell services or products directly to clients. Unlike e-commerce, where brands create websites to give clients a dedicated shopping experience, social commerce allows them to use their social media experience to purchase products.
83% of global B2B marketers practise social media advertising with LinkedIn being the main platform. When employed within the scope of an integrated marketing program, social media advertising can be an effective way to increase leads, drive conversions and boost sales.
The bulk of buyers doing the initial research for new suppliers are millennials. They love their mobile devices, watch videos and live their lives on social media. Is your marketing connecting with them?
If your target audience is hanging out on LinkedIn and Instagram, you need to be there. Set up profiles on these sites; be active on them by regularly posting useful information and commenting on prospects posts. Remember, however, it is social media so don’t even think about employing the heavy sales pitch approach.
B2B multichannel marketing enables a more impactful customer experience. It is the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and online and offline touchpoints.
When it came to sales, buyers in a recent study by McKinsey & Company made clear they prefer a cross-channel mix, choosing in-person, remote, and digital interactions in equal measure. Two-thirds of B2B decision-makers in the study would choose remote human interactions or digital self-service over in-person interactions with a sales representative.
With multichannel established as the new buying norm, the study revealed that in 2021 64% of B2Bs intended to increase the number of hybrid sellers – sales representatives who interact with customers via video, phone, apps and occasional in-person visits.
Leapfrog is a full-service B2B marketing and PR agency. As experienced B2B marketing specialists, we understand business and complex industries. Our expert strategic approach optimises all B2B online and offline marketing channels and tactics.
We have fine-tuned the art of creating compelling B2B business content, drilling down into often complicated and technical subject matter. Our specialist approach has systematically crafted brand and media content with key messages that have consistently resonated effectively with our clients’ audiences. Leapfrog’s knowledge and expertise have helped our clients’ businesses grow year on year.
With our specialist skills, we can save you time and resources, and deliver outstanding results as we have done for hundreds of B2B companies.
Experience the benefits of a specialist B2B marketing agency