Why you need a B2B digital marketing strategy
Most modern businesses need an online presence, and an online presence without a B2B digital marketing strategy is like driving with a blindfold on. Without one, knowing your customers or anticipating their needs and wants is going to be tricky, and ultimately your bottom line will suffer.
Your business needs both an online presence and a clear strategy that guides you toward your goals. A good digital strategy will enable you to better understand your audience as well as find and market to new audiences, improve brand recognition, grow your sales pipeline, and increase the return on investment of marketing resources.
It will also produce measurable results, allowing you to tweak your strategy based on the data as you better understand your customers. This in turn further improves reach, brand recognition, and overall sales.
If your business doesn’t have one then you’re in the right place. If you already have a digital marketing strategy, consider whether it is up to date or if it needs further optimisation to achieve maximum returns.
Why is it important?
Having a polished product, a slick website, and strong content is only part of the puzzle. The other is getting your business’ offering in front of as many eyeballs as possible – and in the digital age, this is often the trickiest part.
Digital marketing allows you to reach a larger audience at a lower cost than with traditional marketing. It is cost-effective, measurable, and scalable.
Unlike traditional marketing methods that employ a scatter-gun approach, digital marketing allows you to better understand and anticipate – and therefore target – your audiences’ needs as well.
Think of it as the difference between buying billboard space versus targeting a known customer directly via their smartphone. A billboard is seen by everyone who walks past – some will be relevant customers but most will walk on by without giving it a second thought.
With digital marketing you forego that broader presence for a more precise targeting of customers relevant to your brand, and who will actually convert. Digital marketing is like a scalpel in the hands of a trained surgeon compared to traditional marketing’s sledgehammer.
A well-thought out and thorough digital marketing strategy can be the difference between a successful campaign that offers a great return, and a waste of your time and money.
What is a B2B digital marketing strategy?
Your B2B digital marketing strategy is a roadmap of activities that help you achieve your business goals through a variety of online marketing channels including paid, earned and owned media.
The strategy should use S.M.A.R.T targets to clearly define the business’ current situation, market share, future direction, and goals. For example, “grow market share from 10% to 20% by the end of the year” or “increase newsletter growth to 5% per month”.
Goals should be SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Timely
It should incorporate a series of activities – or digital marketing campaigns – which make up the building blocks to achieve those goals.
Some of the online marketing channels your digital marketing strategy might use include search engines, social media, email marketing, online advertising, and articles and blogs.
Ultimately the digital marketing strategy will help you coherently tie your campaigns and messaging together across all channels as well as across paid, earned and owned media.
Key benefits of a b2b digital marketing strategy
- Create a step-by-step roadmap for achieving your business goals
- Improve brand recognition and online presence
- Get to know your target audience better – and target them correctly
- Find and market to new audiences
- Grow pipeline of leads and sales
- Increase return on investment of marketing resources
- Generate measurable results
How to create a b2b digital marketing strategy
- Identify your target audience
- Identify your current situation, goals and activities required
- Evaluate your existing online presence and how it fits into your strategy
- Plan and put into action your owned, earned, paid and convergent media campaigns
- Monitor results and optimise future activities accordingly
Need a b2b digital marketing strategy now?
Having a good understanding of your audience and their wants is essential for a successful digital marketing strategy. Creating a strategy takes time – which is often in short supply for business owners. You may want to employ a b2b digital marketing agency to work with you, in which case, the team at 93x is here to help.
Our services include digital, content and SEO strategies, consultancy, branding, and much more. If you want to turbocharge your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us through our contact page or email info@93x.agency.