5 Tips You Need To Implement A Solid B2B Marketing Strategy

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No matter the stage of your business, there are certain goals you want to achieve with a solid B2B marketing strategy: brand awareness, show the value of your product (or service), and above all else, increase revenue by gaining new customers.

Here are five strategies to keep in mind when implementing your B2B marketing strategy:

1. Use a Targeted ICP List

Before you send out a single campaign, it’s crucial to establish your ideal customer profile (ICP) – if you haven’t already. You don’t want to spam your whole database of contacts. Keep the list small – that will yield better results since you’re marketing to businesses you know will benefit from your product or service. 

 

2. Share Good News: With a Point of View

It’s important for you to establish an actual point of view (POV) to share with your audience. The more controversial, the better. This sets the stage for you to become a thought leader in your industry and for customers to seek your insights and guidance before making future business decisions. 

You also need to regularly share market-specific information, or good news, with your ICP group to keep them informed on market/industry news. This needs to be backed up by two or three key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to your ICP and provide further authority to this information.

3. Track Interest

There are a number of ways to reach your target audience. So many it can feel overwhelming. Ideally, your strategy includes a mix of the below elements and managed by a team – one person cannot handle all of these. 

In-person: Tade shows and in-person networking events are fantastic places to conduct lead gen. Always have a plan of attack of who you want to connect with and be sure to follow up in a timely manner after the events. 

Digital: Email – despite what some people claim, is not dead, and it will never die. Research shows it’s the biggest driver of lead gen for all B2Bs because it has the highest conversion rate. To make the most of yours, send regular emails to a hyper-targeted list of your ICP to build awareness, educate your prospects, and keep you top of mind in the decision-making cycle.

Webinars, executive social media, and PR are also great examples of ways to digitally establish a thought leadership presence where your ICPs learn about what you do and how you do it. This is where you build credibility and interest in how you provide additional value to your target audience.

Specifically for executive social media – (one of my favorites!) – did you know less than 1% of LinkedIn’s 740 million users share content weekly? As a founder and CEO, I regularly post and can directly attribute over $2M in business back to my personal (not company) posts, which focus on my industry thought leadership. The key to leveraging this is to find someone to help you put your intended voice on the internet, helping you become a trusted expert in your arena. This translates to further interest and inbound leads.

Paid advertising: you must know who your customers are and what they want to hear. LinkedIn campaigns vary depending on your target audience and they could be pricey, so partner with someone who knows how to execute a targeted LinkedIn campaign. Google pay-per-click (PPC) is probably the easiest lead gen strategy to execute and see whether it’s driving actual ROI or not. 

Public relations – industry trade magazines have power and they’re already hyper-focused on your ICP with a deep audience reach. These media outlets also have social media presence, so getting a feature or mention in a trade pub also means huge exposure through shares and retweets. 

 

4. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. 

Sending an email 24 hours after someone shows interest is not following up, it’s showing your prospect they are not a priority. Make timely, smart follow up your #1 activity. Not following up yourself is like training for a marathon and then sleeping through race morning.

 

5. Lead with Math

I like to say that marketing is math, meaning that you’ll obtain optimal results when you track marketing data and then use those insights to enhance your efforts. Always measure the three V’s after implementing a B2B marketing campaign:

• Volume speaks to the total number of leads and the importance of deltas in your funnel. It’s the foundation for all revenue operations math. The higher the volume, the more useful data you’ll receive.
• Velocity refers to the speed at which things move through your pipeline, which can help or harm your sales engine
• Value means revenue and understanding what your ICP is going to bring in. Consider transactional (project-based) versus enterprise (retainer-based) clients. All revenue is not equal, so I know how to direct my effort for maximum ROI.

It’s important to note that what works for one B2B won’t necessarily work for another. You have to test out multiple strategies and see what works. And once you find the strategies that work best for your business, market, and ICP, double down on those things. 

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kara Brown is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at LeadCoverage, a premier B2B marketing and PR firm that helps companies develop and boost lead generation through targeted marketing strategies and media coverage that drives inbound conversions and measurable marketing ROI. LeadCoverage also provides revenue operation services including marketing and sales alignment, perfecting techstacks, social and email conversion, SEO and PPC, and sales accountability. The supply chain and heavy industrial focused agency was started by two long-haul industry experts, Kara Brown and Will Haraway.