Reaching the right people for your business is the first step in any successful marketing plan. B2B digital marketing is no different.
Businesses are made up of people just like you and I and they’re the ones you need to reach.
There are three essential pieces to reaching the right market.
- Determine who your audience is.
- Position your product or service to focus on the value starting with providing some free value.
- Reach your target audience in the right place and provide content that will help them on their journey. The goal is for them to see your full value by giving them a taste of it.
If you focus on these three parts then you’ll have a good B2B digital marketing plan for reaching the right people in a company.
Your first focus on B2B digital marketing is always figuring out the right target audience.
Who you’re marketing to
Understanding your audience is an important part of B2B digital marketing.
You aren’t going to be marketing to a business either so that’s not important.
It all comes down to the people who work in the company of your market.
What are their needs and pain-points?
You’ll want to understand the people in the company and what they are looking for.
Understanding who you're trying to reach is the basis for successful B2B digital marketing. Click To TweetHow are they likely to start their research that could bring them to your product or service?
- They could start an information gathering search to learn more about what to do to solve their problem.
- It could start with a question to their business peers at different companies in the same industry.
- Understanding what companies are all about who can solve their problem could be the starting point. That could be review sites.
It all comes down to the fact that a company isn’t the one buying your product or service.
It’s the people who work there that are your target. Showing them how you can solve their pain is a priority.
You have to sell to the people of a company, not the company itself. The people are your true consumers.
As with all consumers there needs to be a value that you can provide.
What’s your value?
Knowing your audience is the first step and you know they’re experiencing some sort of pain that you’re there to solve.
That’s why you’re in business, to solve a problem and improve someone’s life.
Your value is in your solution and what you’re going to do for your client.
Showing the value of your product or service is what will help you build intrigue and trust. Nobody will be interested in a product or service if it doesn’t provide some value for them.
There are a lot of ways you can provide value to a business.
Three of them are:
- Lead them to make more sales.
- Increase efficiency that saves money.
- Increase product value and price.
To show people the value you create for their business start by offering value to them for free.
Making your value seen and giving a taste of it helps you build trust with your audience. Click To TweetBusinesses who are experiencing a problem and need a solution also have the problem of researching their problem.
You can provide a lot of value to potential clients in their journey to their final solution.
Free content you can offer is a helpful way to provide value to a business before they become a client.
In fact, without offering some useful and helpful content it’s difficult to build trust.
If the free content is awesome and generates trust and intrigue then there’s a direct connection to the paid product or service.
Good content can originate from your blog or documents in exchange for an email address.
Once you have good content available that will aid people in their search for a solution, you have to reach those people in their search.
How do you reach people?
Everyone is unique in the way they approach the problem they’re trying to solve.
One place you can reach people for B2B digital marketing is to look where they might begin their journey.
I covered 3 ways they’re likely to begin their search above.
They might involve:
- Search engines
- Industry-specific social media
- Company websites
Being in as many meaningful places as you can in B2B digital marketing is important.
Each place where your target audience can begin their journey is somewhere you must have a good presence.
Search engines
Search is one of the most common ways for people to begin their research.
You can equip yourself to reach your potential audience with content that’s helpful to their search.
It all starts with good research as to the terminology your target audience uses and what they’re likely to search for in their research.
Search engine optimization is important and good content is the beginning of that. A good title and description for your content can make or break your content.
If your potential audience finds you in their research stage and receives high-quality help then you’re building trust from the start.
You’ll not only be in the running to be a final product or solution provider but you’ll be at the top of their mind as the most trusted and helpful.
If everything else falls into place (features, cost, etc.) then you’ll have the upper hand.
Industry social media
Every industry has a common group or place where they meet with others in the same industry.
Medical professionals, contractors, financial professionals, etc all have online communities where they congregate.
There are niche social media networks for many industries. Click To TweetThese could be groups on major social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook.
If you do target major social media platforms make sure you know the demographics of them.
They could also be special niche social media websites. You’ll find a large group of marketers hanging out at growth.org.
There are even niche websites within the medical community for a specific type of doctor.
Your job is to find those places where your target audience is online and be there.
Company websites
Are you a known company in your industry? If so then you’re probably on a few lists of companies that do what you do.
If you’re not on any of those lists then you need to get there as soon as possible.
There are top lists for almost every industry you can imagine. It doesn’t even have to be the top, just a list!
Yelp and Thumbtack compile lists of top businesses in many industries (and those are mostly reliant on good reviews).
Some people will start their research there to learn about companies in the industry of solving their problem.
There are also special websites that focus only on specific industries. UpCity is a website that provides lists of companies in the digital marketing industry.
Then there’s ThreeBestRated which focuses on local businesses, professionals, restaurants, and healthcare providers. There are websites like these for almost any industry you can think of.
Be there!
B2B digital marketing with your online presence
A deep and meaningful online presence will be the most successful way to do B2B digital marketing.
As with all marketing, B2B digital marketing requires you to establish in detailed terms who your audience is.
Next, you always need to understand the value you’re providing and expand on that by providing some free value.
Finally, reaching the target audience you’ve laid out and getting your value to them requires finding them where their journey begins.
Your online presence plays an essential role in each step because it has the ability to be so vast and thorough.
To get an idea how your online presence is serving your business get a free personalized Online Presence Report.