When one company markets its products or services to other companies, that’s B2B marketing.
Researchers valued the global B2B eCommerce market at $14.9 trillion in 2020, which was over five times the business-to-consumer market. It’s such a lucrative market!
If you’re considering moving to B2B marketing, read on to understand what it means and how to create a B2B marketing strategy!
What Is B2B Marketing?
B2B (business-to-business) marketing is where a business targets marketing campaigns to other businesses.
B2B marketing strategies aim to show the value of products or services to potential business buyers to convert them into customers.
An Example of B2B Marketing
SemRush is a search engine marketing company that offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
It’s a tool that is known to many marketers and anyone who is looking to rank their content.
Their target audience includes marketers and solopreneurs who run their marketing campaigns. Whenever SemRush launches new features, they send out newsletters to inform their subscribers (marketers) about the features and their value.
That’s B2B marketing via email and we’ll talk all about that next.
Types of B2B Marketing
Attending conferences and trade shows, referral programs, influencer marketing, newsletters, and other digital marketing strategies (social media, SEO, SEP etc.) are all types of B2B marketing.
I’ll dive deeper into the most common marketing strategies below:
1. Email marketing
The B2B email marketing strategy involves sending personalized emails to nurture prospects (companies’ decision-makers). Through email, marketing teams can introduce new products, offer discounts, and share valuable content.
For example, below is an email from SemRush introducing new product features.
2. Content Marketing
Like end consumers, B2B buyers also research online before making a purchase decision. And 30% of marketers believe content marketing has the highest Return on Investment (ROI).
B2B content marketing involves creating and distributing blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, and other content types to attract and engage potential buyers and existing customers.
Besides educating an audience about your product or service, the power of content marketing lies in its ability to move prospects down the buyer’s journey.
Consider how HubSpot shares industry reports like the 2022 Consumer Trends Report. Such a report could reveal a problem that a marketer (their target audience) might not have known existed.
For example, the report shows that 78% of consumers prefer an authentic and relatable marketing video to a polished one with high-quality video and audio.
Ideally, the reader will then check out HubSpot’s articles and other resources on video marketing.
If the marketer creates better videos, they’ll have more customers. Then they’ll need to invest in a customer relationship management or marketing automation tool to optimize their marketing funnel.
Since HubSpot has guided the marketer up to this point, they’ll naturally go for HubSpot’s CRM first.
That’s the power of content marketing.
And as you create valuable articles targetting specific keywords that your business customers use, you’re already doing search engine optimization. SEO helps your business website reach business buyers who research products on Google and other search engines.
3. Social Media Marketing
B2B social media marketing helps to boost brand awareness, build trust and credibility, and generate leads. According to a 2021 B2B report, the top social media channels are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
