B2B Marketing Consultant

Did you know that 72% of the marketing budget in B2B companies is allocated to digital channels, including owned, paid, and earned? (Source: Gartner Research).

This means that more and more B2B buyers are heavily going digital. The future of marketing is digital. Businesses that fail to adopt a digital-first approach will experience lower reach, lower engagement, lower scale, and of course, lesser revenue.

And B2B companies that take the digital-first approach will realize more revenue.

The biggest challenges with B2B marketing include generating quality leads, understanding your target audience, optimizing your website, strategic marketing, and proving ROI.

You can definitely address these challenges through strategic B2B marketing. And that does not mean simply posting a ton of content on social media, or running ads worth thousands of dollars a day.

Why hire a b2b marketing consultant?

Imagine having a roadmap to help you execute a digital-first B2B marketing strategy.

With an experienced b2b marketing consultant, you would have a smoother ride implementing a comprehensive digital marketing plan.

An experienced b2b digital marketing consultant can guide you through the complexities of digital marketing, so you can have more time running the business, instead of worrying about what channels, tactics, or content to use.

Here are some of the things a good B2B marketing consultant can do for you:

• Help define target persona (audience)
• Diagnose your digital marketing strategy and suggest improvements
• Improve Branding
• Improve Web Traffic and SEO efforts (higher rankings)
• Help increase customer engagement
• Help improve conversions (leads)

You can either hire a good b2b marketing agency or go for an experienced b2b digital marketing consultant. Either way, you would see tremendous growth in your pipeline.

Understanding the Difference

What’s b2b marketing?

As you know, b2b (business to business) is about marketing to businesses.

And b2c aims at selling to consumers.

While both b2b and b2c share similarities in terms of channels and tactics, they have several strategic differences.

Digital marketing strategy

B2C businesses have the advantage of casting a wider net and still generating high ROI. For example, a business selling children’s toys can target not only kids but other members of the household, and still generate sales.

The b2b domain does not enjoy the same luxury.

There are fewer businesses than people. Right?

This means that b2b businesses like yours have to niche down to target specific customers (businesses).

The AOV (average order value) for both these domains is different as well.

Generally speaking, b2b products and services cost thousands of dollars (especially if there is an annual subscription). Hence, the average budget per customer is much bigger here.

Given the lower price point of b2c products, the associated volume needs to be high. This is why you will see a “mass appeal” with the marketing channels used by b2c businesses. B2B businesses, however, have a higher price point. Hence, they need to focus on quality (of the audience) over quantity. More is not always good!

b2b marketing and sales

Let’s talk about the sales cycle. How long does it take for you to purchase, say a pair of shoes? 

Instantly? Maybe a day? Max a week?

With b2b, there could be several decision-makers. Hence, the budget approvals take time. As a result, the sales cycle of b2b businesses is much larger compared to that of b2c companies.

Hope that helps you understand the key differences between marketing b2b vs b2c.

Business to Business Marketing

Having worked for over 18 years as a b2b marketing consultant, I can safely say that b2b marketing does not create results overnight.

It takes time, effort, and patience.

Wasting your time on one-off tactics or just creating a b2b marketing funnel without doing the groundwork is not productive, and actually counterproductive to your business.

Several b2b marketing agencies make sideline the importance of doing the much-needed research before creating a marketing plan.

I have seen top b2b marketing agencies manage several million dollars worth of b2b marketing budgets, and yet fail to complete the following checklist:

• Assessing your brand positioning
• Competitive Analysis
• Deciding upon marketing channels

Given the complex, multi-touch nature of B2B marketing, it takes much more than running ads and posting on social to build a successful b2b marketing funnel.

Being an experienced b2b digital marketing consultant, I can guide you through the challenges of b2b marketing, so you can generate more leads and revenue.

Key Stats and Trends for Business to Business Marketing

As a b2b business leader, you need to know the key trends in b2b marketing.

Close to 50% of b2b companies are likely to increase their content marketing spend by next year.

The average MQL to SQL conversion rate is close to 13%.

More than 50% of b2b buyers put the video as the most useful content. Another reason to consider using b2b marketing videos.

As per Google, 71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search. A big reason why you should invest in SEO and content marketing.