The Learning Center

If you’re unsure of what B2B is, it’s a business-to-business model, meaning one business sells their product or services to another business rather than a B2C business that sells directly to consumers. If you sell to other businesses and want to increase your sales, you’re in the right place. In order to grow your B2B company, you need a good marketing strategy specific to your line of business. While many marketing strategies for B2C companies can work for B2B, here is a B2B marketing strategy specifically for B2B businesses by creating 4 things to get more sales.

Create Your Target Audience

Based on whatever service or product you sell, you should know what types of businesses would buy from you. Those businesses probably either need someone like you or already have someone like you. Your goal is to convince them either that they need you or that you are a better option than the current B2B business they are using with a method known as hyper-targeting, customizing your message to a very specific audience. The best way to do this is to create a persona of who you think is your audience. You can give them a gender and a name—Harry; a lifestyle—golfer; income—$100,000 a year; etc. Pinpoint everything you can think about who your audience might be, visualize them, and advertise specifically to that person. Creating a persona of your audience can help you step into their mindset to think like they do and tell them exactly what they want to hear.

Create Content Specific to that Audience

Once you have your audience persona in mind, you can start thinking about what they care about. You have to consider their purchasing path, their motivations for their business, as well as their pain points they might be experiencing either because they aren’t using your business or because they are using someone else’s. What will resonate with them to make them listen to you? What do you have to offer that might make them pick you over another business? Content includes both the message and the wording of that message. Does yours convert effectively?

Create an Extended Conversion Goal

Most B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses write content that will lead directly to a sale. For B2B businesses, however, that content needs a lengthened marketing strategy. Why? Because selling machinery (or whatever product/service you offer) to a whole business takes a lot longer than selling a pair of headphones to one person. You have to educate that business about your service or product, convince the highest authority to buy into your business, as well as wait for them to be able to fit you into their budget and approve you for their business. Since more thought and work goes into buying into a B2B business, you have to create more content with the ultimate goal of conversion. You can’t send them straight to a landing page prompting them to buy. Send them to your website to educate them. Create educational content that will give businesses confidence in buying your product or service, provide more information than just a sales pitch, and build your brand up with social media to engage people aside from selling to them.

Create Educational Content

Sometimes it’s better to educate than sell. Telling someone they need something and telling them why they need something are very different and have different results. Telling them to buy from you won’t get you a sale. But explaining why they need you and how they can benefit from you—that’s where you’ll get your sales. One of the best ways to create educational content that results in sales is through podcasts and videos. With a podcast or video, you have the ability to explain what you have to offer and educate businesses without having to hope they read pages of technical education. Start by telling them/showing them your unique value proposition and then how it will benefit their business specifically. Once you convince them they need you, you can begin educating them on  everything they need to know to make a confident purchase.

A B2B marketing strategy is a lot similar to B2C strategies, except that you have to take into consideration the different and lengthier sales process you have to go through to end up taking a lead to a sale. To sell to other businesses, you have to put yourself in their shoes, create content designed specifically to what will resonate with them, and lead them through the lengthy education process in hopes that it will lead to an approval by that business. A B2B marketing strategy isn’t focused on making a sale. That may be your end goal, but your focus should always be on understanding your customer and educating them to feel confident in your business. The sale will just be a side effect.