Developing an effective business-to-business (B2B) communication strategy can be somewhat daunting, even for the most experienced marketing team. There is no fool-proof, one-size-fits-all approach. Great B2B communication requires a focused, tailored plan to generate the success you’re looking for.
Below we will lay out some key factors your plan should have, as well as some proven strategies that will help you achieve great results.
Key Factors of a B2B Communication Strategy
First, let’s look at the key factors of a successful B2B communication strategy.
1. Establish Clear Goals and Objectives
If your company wants to improve communication with potential leads and customers, you must first establish clear goals and objectives. What results are you trying to achieve? What actions are you trying to drive with your communication plan? How will you monitor, track and report on the results of your communication strategy?
Take some time to explore your options and do your research. Find out how other businesses have successfully communicated to a similar target audience and achieved the results you’re hoping to achieve.
2. Understand Your Audience
Now that you know what you want to achieve with your strategy, you need to understand the audience you will be communicating with. The better you can understand the audience, the better you can tailor your messaging for maximum effectiveness. Answering the following questions will help steer you in the right direction.
- What are the demographics of your target audience?
- What is their role in the organization?
- How does their organization buy the solutions you sell and what’s their role in the decision making process?
- What are your key buying influencers’ primary motivators? Pain points?
- What sources of information do they turn to for ideas on how to solve their business challenges?
- What are their priority initiatives?
- How is their success measured?
- What would cause your buyer to believe that your solution is not their best option?
- Which aspects of the competing solutions does your buyer perceive as most critical, and what are their expectations for each?
- What are their preferred communication channels? ?
3. Develop Audience-Centric Messaging
Using your understanding of the audience, develop appropriate messaging to reach them. Depending on your resources and goals, you can’t reach everyone. Be sure to prioritize your market segments so you are focused on the audience that will most likely produce the best results. Many a B2B communication strategy has failed because marketers spread themselves too thin, trying to reach all potential customers, and end up reaching none. Be realistic about your goals, your resources, and your capabilities.
4. Focus on Specific Marketing Channels
In B2B marketing and communications, you’re going to need to decide which communication channels you will use to reach your target audience. Think of channels as the ways and means by which your messages reach prospective customers.
The channels you choose need to be able to work together congruently. Most marketing automation platforms have already figured this part out for you. There are many different channels out there to communicate with B2B buyers. Here are examples of just a few:
- In-Person Events
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Paid Social Media
- Organic Social Media Channels
- Organic Search
- Paid Search (e.g., Google & Bing Ads)
- Outbound Calling / Tele-prospecting
- Inbound Calls / Tele-qualification
- Live Chat / Chat Bots
- Direct Mail
- Media Outlets
- Direct Sales
- Channel Partners
5. Create a High-Performance Website
It’s great to have a website, but it won’t help you or your prospective customers if it’s uninteresting and difficult to navigate. Your website needs to be a top-of-the-line information resource that’s easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and answers your buyers’ most pressing questions. There are plenty of web design experts out there who can set up your site and produce the content, as well as update and maintain it all.
It doesn’t matter how solid your B2B marketing strategy is if your web presence is weak. If prospective customers can’t find you in their moment of interest or access your website easily, there’s little point in doing any marketing. Consider how your target audience researches, evaluates and selects products/solutions, then develop a user experience that enables and accelerates their buying journey. Giving your visitors a direct link to customer service helps too.
6. Leverage Digital Marketing
We now live in the age of consumer control and consumer preferences have shifted to online communications. Consequently, digital marketing must become a priority if you want to attract new audiences, build trust, and drive engagement to fuel your pipeline. The good news is that digital marketing can reach many more potential customers at a lower cost than traditional advertising like print or newspaper, so it should be an essential part of your B2B communications strategy tool belt.
Given the explosive growth of media channels to reach and engage B2B buyers, there are plenty of avenues to get your business on the radar of companies needing your product or service. Media channels may differ slightly from those used for B2C marketing, but for the most part, there are four types of media channels: owned, earned, paid, and shared.
First things first. Your communications strategy should come before planning tactics. You should understand your audiences’ communication preferences and buying journey before developing your content plan or selecting your media channels. A good place to start is to consider your goals & objectives, the communication preferences of your target audience, and their current relationship with your brand. Once you understand the answers to those questions, you can evaluate and select the media channels that closely align to your goals.
These channels are best if you’re looking to extend your company’s reach and grow your audience:
- Owned:
- Search engine optimization
- Earned:
- Online directories and forums
- Media relations (with online publishers)
- Paid:
- Paid search (e.g., Google & Bing Ads)
- Digital advertising
- Content syndication with industry trade publications
These channels work well if you’re looking to build trust and drive engagement amongst established audiences:
- Owned:
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Company-hosted online communities
- Blogs
- Earned:
- Customer reviews & testimonials
- Paid:
- Retargeting
These channels work well if you’re looking to monetize your assets and fuel your pipeline with qualified, sales-ready leads:
- Owned:
- Live chat / Chat bots
- Webinars
- Company-hosted virtual summits / interactive events
Try These B2B Communication Strategies
Now that we know what a good B2B communication strategy looks like, let’s look at some specific strategies that could help you reach your goals.
1. Spend Some Time Listening, Publishing & Engaging on Social Media
These days, if you want to grow your B2B presence, you’ll need to spend some time listening, posting, and engaging in the conversations taking place on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all the other social media platforms out there. Social media marketing is increasingly the preferred communication channel of B2B buyers, and you should jump on that bandwagon – or risk being leapfrogged by the competition.
It’s not enough to just have social media accounts if you want effective B2B marketing results. The more active a presence you have on social media, the more potential customers will see you. Having a solid social media plan embedded into your goals and objectives can be helpful when developing your overall communication strategy. There are a variety of tools that enable you to identify trending topics to inform your content strategy, make it easy to publish content faster, and engage in the conversations inspired by your messages and content.
2. Prioritize Testimonials and Reviews
There’s a lot to be said about customer reviews and testimonials. Many times, customers only leave a review if something bad took place. Otherwise, business customers generally just expect top-notch service and products without having to give a review. Happy customers sometimes need to be coaxed into leaving a review just so your company can get on the map.
When it comes to customer loyalty, providing excellent customer service is a must if you’re looking for 5-star online reviews, and a little goes a long way. You can also get some Google reviews for your business or through various other channels like G2.
3. Account-Based Marketing
If you deal with large clients in a B2B environment, you can consider applying account-based marketing. Basically, account-based marketing views a particular prospective customer as a market of one. This allows your team to create hyper-focused messaging because your target audience is so clearly and specifically defined.
This way, you can get the most out of your marketing budget by reducing wasted effort and maximizing value for clients. It’s easier and simpler for them to receive specific messaging than to sift through the noise present in the wider market. Everybody saves time.
4. Content Marketing
If you need to attract new customers, content marketing is an excellent way to attract new audiences, build trust, and drive engagement to generate high quality sales leads. Content marketing involves publishing smart and helpful content in different channels and in a variety of formats, such as ebooks, white papers, videos, podcasts, etc. It is often closely aligned with your wider digital marketing strategy to ensure that the content is findable in your prospect’s moment of interest and preferred communication channel.
The key is to create content of real value to potential customers. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking weak content will do the job. Your potential customers are more savvy than ever. They are bombarded all day long with offers of free content and have access to millions of hours of free video. To succeed with content marketing, you must create fantastic content. Otherwise, it’s just more noise on the internet.
5. Programmatic Marketing
Another potential strategy to reach more B2B customers is with programmatic marketing. This is a complex process, but to put it simply, this strategy uses algorithms and big data to enable your organization to become omnipresent to your target audience. With programmatic marketing, you’ll distribute highly personalized digital ads in real time to ensure your message reaches the exact audience you’re looking for — exactly when and where they are most receptive to them.
This can be especially important if your message is time sensitive and needs to reach the audience right now. It’s also important if your budget is very limited. In both cases, your messaging can adapt in real-time to go wherever your target audience happens to be digitally congregating at any given time, all thanks to the magic of algorithms and data.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to think about when planning and executing your B2B communication strategy. The strategies described here are valuable tools for anyone wanting to grow their B2B audience, build trust, and fuel the pipeline with qualified, sales-ready leads. Stay focused and keep your eye on the prize.
We hope you found this article helpful. If you’re interested in more great content about business and marketing, check out the other articles on our site.