Creating a Winning B2B Digital Marketing Strategy: Key Elements and Steps

Lead nurturing & relationship building

An important piece that cannot be overlooked when implementing your b2b digital marketing strategy is the trusted relationship you must first foster with potential companies and industry professionals before expecting them to invest in your products and services. In a world driven by technology, human connection is still the foundation of any strong relationship, and it goes a long way. Start by answering questions and engaging through social media, run awareness campaigns to see who you are reaching, and create content that strengthens your brand and supports your image. Identifying and understanding your target audience by getting to know their pain points, behaviors, and common challenges will allow you to then tailor your digital marketing plan to speak directly to them. B2B marketing often requires a little more TLC, with a focus on trust and relationships than B2C marketing, since there are typically more decision makers involved, the cost is higher, and possibly more steps are required before the final sale. Remember, there is a lot more at risk for a business owner/decision maker looking to make the best impact on fellow employees and stakeholders within their company, than a single consumer making a personal purchase. Responding to leads and implementing a plan to follow up after the initial contact is imperative in the success of your campaigns. 

Understanding The b2b Marketing Sales Cycle

As mentioned earlier, the typical b2b marketing sales process may require more attention and relationship nurturing than selling directly to the consumer. 

Your business must first identify the ideal target and get to know the type of businesses/companies you wish to sell to. Once that has been established you must dedicate a period of time to truly understanding and getting to know the details of these companies – identifying their pain points, challenges, and knowing what makes them unique. 

You can begin to build a relationship with your target audience by engaging through social media outlets and running awareness campaigns. These types of campaigns are relatively inexpensive and quite successful in pinpointing the mood of your audience. 

Painted Robot – Case Study

As an example of how to implement the above strategies, we will take a look at a client that experienced exponential growth in their asphalt business through b2b digital marketing. Our initial first step was to understand the asphalt business, the challenges they needed to overcome and their goals as a company. 

We then identified their ideal target and got to the root of their pain points as decision makers in the asphalt industry and the problems we were able to solve for them. 

Demographic targeting on LinkedIn allowed us to find specific groups and users by job title, location and the companies they worked for, giving us the opportunity to present them with our value proposition and generate many new leads. This approach allowed our client to reach an audience that was nearly untouchable using other outbound marketing strategies. 

We were then able to take these leads and use a lookalike targeting strategy to target users and companies with similar characteristics, behaviors and needs based on the analysis of these new customers. Feedback from this campaign also allowed us to define new audiences for the client, as well as understand the style of messaging that resonates best with the intended audience.