Did you know that more than 70% of B2B decision makers spend over half of their research time online?
With more than 61% of business-to-business transactions starting online, more and more businesses are turning to B2B marketing to generate leads and more revenue.
Commanding close to $15 billion in traditional ad spend, and $9 billion in digital ad spend in the US, business-to-business companies are planning a substantial jump in digital marketing spend.
Marketing for b2b businesses can be challenging.
In this guide, we will cover:
- What is B2B Marketing?
- Origins & History of B2B Marketing
- B2B Marketing vs B2C Marketing
- B2B Marketing Types
- B2B Marketing Challenges
- B2B Marketing Strategies & Tactics
- B2B Marketing Leading Generation Ideas
- B2B Marketing Myths
- B2B Marketing Examples
- B2B Marketing Trends
What is B2B Marketing?
Business-to-business marketing (B2B) is another name for business marketing or industrial marketing.
B2B marketing encompasses strategies and tactics to market a product or service to another business.
Origins & History of B2B Marketing
Marketing is not a new practice.
A man by the name of Umbricius Scauras mastered the art of advertising, branding, packaging, and labeling centuries ago in 35 B.C.
You can read more about this here.
Two industrial magazines in particular can be credited to the birth of business marketing- The Furrow by John Deere and the American Railroad Journal.
While the Furrow targeted farmers, the American Raid Road Journal’s readership was miners and manufacturers.
Here is an image from an 1897 edition of the Furrow:
And here is one from the 1848 edition of the American Railroad Journal.
Marketing for b2b, in general, focuses on niche segments.
Unlike other forms of marketing, business-to-business buyers care more about their relationships with the sellers than just focusing on the price.
In the 1850s, England witnessed the birth of conventions and trade shows.
This triggered the growth of world fairs around the world.
These events would market several new, niche products- from light bulbs to bubble gums.
The B2B marketing world before the arrival of the Internet comprised trade catalogs, direct mail, conventions, in-house magazines, and sales enablement literature.
It was only after the second world war that there was substantial growth in the enterprise.
For example, Dow Chemical witnessed a post-war boom.
In the 1920s, marketing observed a fundamental shift from looking at a business as a manufacturer to conceiving a company as an institution that sold goods.
During this time, the idea of competitive analyses (product differentiation) and advertising as a means to influence consumers’ behavior also gained popularity.
Did you know that marketing departments didn’t exist until the 1950s?
B2B Marketing vs B2C Marketing
While both b2b marketing and b2c marketing share similarities, they have important differences.
For the most part, businesses like Slack, HubSpot, Google, Salesforce, and Zoom fall into the Business to Business domain.
Examples of Business to Consumer companies include Alibaba, Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, Target, and Mcdonald’s.
Here are the key differences between b2c and b2b marketing:
Objective
Business-to-business consumers focus on ROI (return on investment), product/service efficiency, and expertise.
B2C buyers, on the other hand, want deals and entertainment.
Psychology
Logic and financial incentive dictate buyer motivation in business marketing.
Business-to-consumer buyers are driven by emotions.
Marketing for b2b works best when the content is focused on educating the prospects.
This is not a must-have (although it is great) for B2C marketing.
Sales Cycle
It could take weeks and months to convert a prospect to a customer in the B2B domain.
B2C has relatively shorter sales cycles- even a few minutes.
B2B Market Types
B2B markets can be classified as producers, resellers, governments, and institutions.
Producers
B2B companies sell to producers
Producers, then, transform those goods and sell them to other businesses, or directly to consumers.
For example, McDonald’s buys meat (chicken, fish, etc.) from a B2B company, and turns them into burgers to sell to consumers.
Likewise, Nestle buys milk and other raw materials from other businesses and sells them to consumers.
Resellers
Businesses like Walmart and Target don’t transform goods. They sell as is (for the most part).
For example, Walmart might buy from a business called Fruit of the Loom, and sell it to consumers.
Government
Governments purchase a large number and types of products from businesses.
For example, the US government buys services and products from logistics and transportation companies.
Institutions
Institutions like Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Churches also purchase from other businesses.
B2B Marketing Challenges
Business-to-business marketing has its own set of challenges.
In 2022, the b2b domain is facing challenges related to hiring, strategic content creation, digitizing the b2b purchase process, integrating data sources, using AI for repetitive tasks, understanding the individual customer journey, conquering attribution, and leading with human-centric messaging.
Research done by Statista suggests that close to 27% of B2B businesses (participating in the survey) cited a lack of knowledge of which digital marketing techniques to use for driving growth as one of their biggest challenges.
Other challenges include digitalizing the sales process, and a lack of expertise to build a strong buyer’s journey online.
A b2b marketing consultant can help navigate through the complexities of business marketing.
B2B Strategies and Tactics
Often, people confuse b2b marketing with digital strategies such as content, SEO, sem, or email.
Before diving into innovative b2b marketing strategies, you should look into the core aspects- brand positioning, target audience & personas, competitive analysis, and marketing channels.
You can also think of these steps as what, why, and how
Let’s talk about the b2b marketing fundamentals to help you understand how to create a b2b marketing strategy.
Brand Positioning
Positioning your brand means creating a unique image in the consumer’s mindset.
Without understanding your brand positioning, you should not even think of implementing a business marketing strategy.
The first step in marketing for b2b is to create a brand positioning statement.
Similar to a mission or vision statement, this should be a concise statement that both your team and prospects can trust and believe.
Target Audience
When you know your audience, your audience knows.
This is another crucial aspect of creating a robust marketing strategy.
Do not try to market to all.
This is one of the biggest mistakes businesses make.
Find your niche.
The time you spend locating your target audience will prove valuable in creating buyer personas.
And for clarity, a buyer persona is not the same as the target audience.
Buyer personas are a breakdown of target audiences.
Such personas are more like zoomed-in portraits of your prospects/customers.
Competitive Analysis
While market research can help you locate your prospects, the competitive analysis gives you an “edge” or market advantage in the business world.
A detailed competitive analysis should look into the offerings (products or services) of your key competitor(s), their strengths and weaknesses, the window of opportunity to enter a market, barriers, indirect/secondary competition, and their digital marketing analysis.
Now that you have finished the three main steps in kicking off your B2B marketing strategy, it is time to explore some of the best b2b marketing channels.
B2B Marketing Channels
Let’s say you find in competitive analysis that your biggest competitor is getting the best results from specific marketing channels.
This is when you sit down and brainstorm how you can leverage those channels (and others) to get that competitive edge.
Putting all your effort into a single marketing channel can be dangerous and counterproductive.
Here are the main B2B marketing channels that you can consider.
Please note that the weightage for each channel should be specific to a business.
Website
Now, while a website is not a channel, it is an important aspect of business-to-business strategy.
Having a conversion-optimized website can help you achieve a better MQL to SQL conversion rate.
Please note that the industry average MQL to SQL conversion rate is 13%.
Your website serves as a hub for all your digital channels and efforts mentioned below.
B2B SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
As per Google, more than 89% of B2B researchers use the Internet to collect information about potential purchases.
Moreover, the average B2B buyer performs 12 different online searches before interacting with a website.
There are several more stats like these that shout out loud- use SEO for B2B marketing.
Having the right SEO strategy can help your business drive more qualified leads to your website.
B2B Email Marketing
More than 77% of business-to-business companies use email as part of their content strategy.
And around 79% of business-to-business marketers suggest that email is the most successful channel for distributing their content.
The ROI on email is more than $43 for every $1 spent.
As you can see, using email is highly efficient.
B2B email marketing, when done right, can prove extremely productive.
Create educational and informational content aligned with your buyer personas.
Don’t always try to sell; instead, educate.
In a world where we are constantly flooded with emails, creating laser-focused, informational email newsletter content becomes more important than ever in marketing for business-to-business.
B2B marketing automation platforms can help with email outreach and nurturing.
With marketing automation, you can create automated flows that will engage your customers.
You can use marketing automation to target visitors to important pages on your website, onboard new customers, and nurture leads.
Automation comes in handy for b2b saas businesses trying to reduce churn.
B2B Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Did you know that PPC ads can boost B2B brand awareness by 140%?
However, most B2B businesses do SEM or PPC the wrong way.
Focusing solely on branded keywords is not the best way to optimize your SEM efforts.
Think about this.
The chances of a user, who has never heard about you, searching for your product/service is quite slim.
Isn’t it?
A smart way of using advertising in b2b marketing is by focusing on promoting relevant categories for your product/service, and not just your product/service.
B2B Content Marketing
Why content marketing is important for b2b?
For starters, a B2B buyer consumes 3-5 pieces of content on average before reaching out to the business.
B2B companies focusing on consistent content marketing generate 67% more leads monthly.
Content Marketing is about adding value to the buyer.
It supports your SEO efforts as well.
The best content for b2b marketing is one that is aligned with different stages of your buyer’s journey.
Don’t make the common mistake of starting with educating your prospects about your products/services.
Experimentation should be a key aspect of effective content marketing.
Try different content types- from articles to webinars, and assess which content form resonated best with your specific target audience and personas.
Here is what an effective B2B journey looks like (credit Gartner CSO Update).
The steps of the buyer journey in B2B involve- Identifying Problems, Exploring Solutions, Building requirements, Selecting Suppliers, Validating Solutions, and Creating Consensus.
B2B Social Media Marketing
You might wonder, isn’t social media marketing for B2C, and not for B2B?
Then, why use social media for promoting your business to other businesses?
That is where most get it wrong.
Let’s talk about some numbers first.
80% of LinkedIn members drive business decisions.
That is why Linkedin in b2b marketing holds immense importance for companies.
Test your business marketing strategies across different social media channels.
For some businesses, youtube b2b marketing might work better than using another channel.
Experimentation (using audience data) is key to success.
For business-to-business content marketers, social media remains the best distribution channel.
B2B marketing, like other forms, also involves human beings.
And we all use social media.
One of the biggest reasons why most businesses struggle with social media marketing is a lack of strategy and clarity.
If your social media strategy is not aligned with your business objectives, it is most likely to FAIL!
Think of social as a channel for creating brand awareness, building trust and credibility, and educating your audiences.
And not as a strategy for direct selling.
B2B social media marketing need not be boring as well.
With the right storytelling, you can humanize your business story.
Account-Based Marketing
This is more of a strategy than a channel.
Put simply, ABM (account-based marketing) is a strategy that focuses on marketing to individual companies with more than 1000 employees.
The strategy can be broken down into three core steps:
- Deciding on high-level accounts to target
- Identifying decision-makers in the target companies
- Engaging the decision-makers
Linkedin B2B marketing also takes into account account-based marketing.
Please note I said ABM is simple, and not easy.
Account-based marketing leverages advertising (social platforms and search engines), using custom offers, hosting invite-only b2b marketing events, and training & webinars.
Delivering a personalized experience is one of the biggest challenges of ABM.
Account Based Marketing also faces issues such as creating a scalable strategy, generating customized content, and sales enablement.
B2B Podcasting
Given our omnichannel marketing environment, podcasts deliver meaningful partnerships, connections, and long-term relationships.
The engagement through podcasts is higher compared to other channels.
A cool trick to using podcasts is to repurpose the audio into a content piece and distribute it across different digital channels.
As per Edison Research, more than 50% of podcast consumers are likely to consider the brands they came across on podcasts.
Moreover, more than 45% of podcast listeners have an average household income of at least $250k. And 51% might be working management-level jobs.
Through b2b marketing podcasts, businesses can establish thought leadership, generate brand awareness, create scalable content, grow a network of targeted prospects, reach an on-the-go audience, and above all, humanize their brands.
B2B Marketing Lead Generation Ideas
Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of marketing for the business-to-business domain.
Some unique ideas for lead generation include adding exit-intent popups, on-site retargeting, email automation, leveraging case studies, creating valuable content aligned with different stages of the buyer’s journey, adding customer testimonials for social proof, developing hard-to-decline lead-gen offers, offering free courses and webinars as lead magnets, hosting live video events, and using podcasts.
Marketing Tools
It is also important to use the right tools to save time and energy.
Some of the key tools in this regard include b2b marketing automation platforms, CRM, market intelligence platforms, social media management platforms, event marketing platforms, email platforms, and team collaboration platforms.
I am a big proponent of “less is more”.
While the right set of tools can help you automate tasks, having too many tools can easily create chaos.
Common Myths
Like any other field, business-to-business attracts its share of misconceptions or myths.
Let’s address them once and for all.
Myth 1: It is Boring
Marketing is what you make of it.
If you do not use creativity in business marketing, it will be dull for your end user.
With the right storytelling, you can add humor and wit to your b2b content.
For some reason, b2b marketing is seen as marketing to organizations.
That is true.
However, organizations are made up of humans, like you and I.
Myth 2: We should target senior executives only
The decision-making process for B2B has undergone a drastic change over the last few years.
As per Google, 64% of C-level executives have the last say.
However, close to 24% of other employees (non-executive level) impact b2b purchase decisions.
Hence, marketing only to C-level executives is not the right way of doing business marketing.
Myth 3: PPC is all about Brand Marketing
Did you know that 71% of b2b researchers start online research with a generic search, and not with Branded Search?
As per Google, B2B researchers do 12 searches before interacting with a B2B website.
Therefore, your PPC efforts should be diversified into generic, educational terms, and not solely on your brand-related terms.
Now that we have covered most aspects, it is time to dive into some of the best examples or case studies of business marketing.
B2B Marketing Examples
Here are some cool and unique hacks.
Salesforce
Given that the average ROI on CRM is 8x (over $8 for every $1), CRM providers jostle for the top spot.
However, Salesforce has been able to stand out from the crow with its slick saas b2b marketing strategy.
Salesforce adopted a human-centric approach to digital.
For example, they started pushing entertaining videos.
The Company also used a stop-motion slide share and customer success stories.
As a result of this, Salesforce generated over 80% more traffic, 10000 + downloads, 6000+ email signups, and over 2500% growth traffic from social media traffic.
Wistia
Earlier, I mentioned marketing for business-to-business need not be dull.
Well, here is a real-life example for you- Wistia.
As you might know, Wistia is a video hosting platform used by thousands of businesses.
This is also a challenge since Wistia’s target audience is relatively broad.
The platform addressed this issue by leveraging a generic (but fun) social media strategy.
What could be better than using dogs? (we all love our four-legged pals).
Wistia implemented a social media marketing strategy comprising fun videos and images.
Here is an example:
Wistia demonstrates a “fun” side to business by showcasing human-centric content.
This kind of content builds trust.
Users consuming Wistia’s content would start seeing the Company as a trustworthy brand.
By shifting from product-centric to human-centric content, Wistia has been winning the social media game.
This is one of the best examples of b2b marketing campaigns done right!
Intuit: Fintech B2B Marketing
Financial companies’ content is generally seen as uptight and dull.
Intuit decided to change it with its Death of the Office infographic.
The infographic featured no CTAs (call to action).
The goal was to provide value to the users.
Rich with valuable, thought-provoking data, the infographic makes the user pause and “think”.
This graphic from Intuit gained tremendous popularity on social media.
These b2b marketing case studies demonstrate that business-to-business marketing can be creative and fun.
B2B Marketing Trends: Future of B2B Marketing
Let’s talk about the emerging and new trends in b2b marketing and the future of b2b marketing.
Growing Adoption of Marketing Channels
With growing digitalization, b2b companies are seeing more competition.
More and more businesses, therefore, are adopting b2b marketing channels.
As per Gartner, Marketing strategies are focusing on customer journey orchestration, and change and volatility management.
B2B businesses should leverage LinkedIn, YouTube, and Review Websites to establish authority and drive awareness.
Content Marketing
Businesses in the b2b domain are using different content formats to engage prospects.
Common formats include email newsletters, blogs/articles, infographics, images, videos, case studies, and ebooks.
Video Marketing
32% of b2b businesses use video for sales.
The growing consumption of videos on the Internet offers a great opportunity for b2b businesses to engage with their audiences.
DEI
As per Deloitte, businesses can reflect their DEI efforts in talent acquisition & retention, community investments, and brand messaging.
Marketing can help in this regard,
ZenDesk is doing a commendable job showcasing its DEI efforts.
Here is an example:
A shift in KPIs and Metrics
With the evolution of customer needs, businesses need to transition from using traditional metrics such as ROI to customer retention, marketing attribution, and third-party cookies.
Learning Resources
If you are new to business marketing, a few resources can help you get a surface understanding of this domain.
B2B marketing webinars hosted by top b2b marketing websites can be a good place to start.
And if you are a fan of reading, here are some of the best b2b marketing books:
- Unleash Possible by Samantha Stone
- Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
- Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
A good business marketing course can also help.
Check out Udemy and LinkedIn Learning to access the best b2b marketing courses such as the Linkedin b2b marketing course.
Wrapping Up
Marketing would become more and more decentralized as we witness increasing customer sophistication.
Businesses need to take a proactive approach to understand the b2b marketing funnel or the buyer’s journey, as against using a reactive approach.
By focusing on creating an authentic and trust-building experience with the users, businesses can win the business-to-business marketing game.