How to Face the Elephant in the Room
There are 2.3 billion active social media users worldwide and more than 2 million blogs posted daily. Yet, 51 percent of businesses don’t have a digital strategy. Digital marketing is like the elephant in the conference room-too big to ignore, yet many are unsure how to tame it.
Although we often think of digital marketing as a tool for B2C businesses, there are compelling reasons why B2B businesses should take on more advanced digital marketing strategies. These strategies not only build relationships, they drive revenue.
You may be asking what is digital? And how can a B2B digital marketing strategy work for my business? We’ll start with the what. Digital includes but is not limited to:
- Optimizing your website for both desktop views and mobile. This means your site should be easy to read and look good on smartphones and tablets.
- Using keywords, especially long-tail keywords (those with three or more words), that specifically relate to your business.
- Incorporating metadata, including meta descriptions and title tags, that include a primary keyword.
- Posting original content frequently, or at least consistently. We recommend posting blogs, videos, infographics or other content at least twice monthly. We touch on this in greater detail, next.
Creating content builds trust (and SEO)
Creating original content is the foundation to a strong B2B digital marketing strategy. An effective strategy includes writing web pages that are highly search engine optimized and developing content-most often blogs. Not only does creating authentic content make you an expert and a thought leader in your field, it also increases your company’s search engine optimization, or SEO. What’s the big deal about SEO, you ask? According to CMS Wire, the top three results on a search engine results page get more than 50 percent of clicks. In other words, the higher your website ranks in search, the more likely it will be seen. Admittedly, ranking in the top three of search results is really, really difficult. But, optimizing your site is much better-a necessity, in fact-than not optimizing at all.
Digital marketing complements sales teams
Digital marketing can be a great tool for targeting your customer the way they want to be targeted in the new age of sales. BCG reports “more than three-fourths of all B2B business consumers have only limited interaction with salespeople.” Instead of interacting face-to-face with only one sales person, B2B consumers are acting much more like B2C consumers by reviewing online content, including reviews and third-party websites, before they make a purchase. This trend requires businesses to step up their B2B digital marketing efforts. Take the software industry for example, where 63 percent of buyers report reading reviews to guide their buying process, and 59 percent of buyers say they are likely or extremely likely to choose a product based on reviews.
Gather data and actually use it!
Once you’ve launched your B2B digital marketing strategy, you can transform the way you do business by collecting and analyzing data about your customer’s buying trends, favorite communication channels and more. A great place to start when talking about consumer data is Google AnalyticsTM. A gold mine of information, Google Analytics has the power to enter the minds of your most desired consumers-but only if you know how to use it! The Digital Analytics Association reports that less than half of B2B marketers are using analytics effectively. Don’t be a statistic! Consider getting certified, or hire someone that is certified to interpret the vast amount of data available.
To recap, digital is huge-and a little intimidating at first. But being friends with the elephant is much more enjoyable (and profitable) than just allowing it to hang out in the corner.
Have an elephant that needs taming? Blue Door Consulting’s expert team would love to help you with your B2B digital marketing strategy. Give us a call, today!
