Today, we are going to give the B2B marketing playbook that we used to grow our own business from 0 dollars to millions of dollars and making the Inc. 5000 list – twice.
This is the same B2B marketing playbook that we deploy for our clients that have resulted in 6-figure returns within 12 months.
And these same B2B marketing strategies are backed by research and data. We’ve studied research from all over the web, including LinkedIn’s B2B marketing report.
So if you want the best B2B marketing strategy from a company that:
A) uses this strategy,
B) does it for other businesses, and
C) uses data
…then buckle up because we promise you that you won’t regret reading this post.
Today, we’re not going to hold anything back from you.
If you need more leads and appointments on a steady and consistent basis, then we’re going to tell you every way we know possible to do this.
We’re dropping strategies, tools, and some secrets that no one else is sharing for free.
Ok, so here is exactly what you need to prioritize in your B2B marketing plan, in order of priority.
B2B Marketing Playbook: 12 Tips & Secrets To Increase Leads
1. Build Your Brand
Building your brand is the most powerful way to market your business and achieve long-term growth.
And we’re not making this up. This is coming from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute themselves.
Building a strong brand is proven to be more effective than short-term marketing over time.
Now here’s an eye-catching statistic.
According to LinkedIn research, only 4% of B2B marketers measure the impact of their marketing beyond 6 months.
And do you want to know how long it takes to build brand awareness?
You’ve guessed it! Over 6 months.
By taking a long-term approach and investing in your brand, you will be better than 95% of your competitors because they are relying on short-term tactics.
For example, those quick-hit Facebook and LinkedIn Ads that are often used as a shot-gun approach.
You can start to build your brand by adding value.
You can do this through publishing YouTube videos, recording podcasts, writing blogs, creating value-driven social media posts, and so much more.
Eventually, if you build your brand with the right audience, then they will eventually determine that they need the service you offer.
And how great it would be for them to think of your brand first.
2. SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Let us ask you a question: where would you find services like what you offer?
How would you discover businesses that offer the services you provide?
9 times out of 10 you will start your search on search engines.
Whether it’s Google, Yahoo, or the App store, simply being there when people are looking for your services can propel your business to heights you’ve never seen before.
Now, tell us another traffic source that can deliver in-market traffic, meaning people that are actively looking for solutions to your website, for completely free?
You can’t, right? That’s because B2B SEO is the single-most effective marketing channel for B2B marketing companies.
There’s nothing like being the first search result on a phrase that gets searched hundreds and thousands of times per month.
That keeps coming, day after day, week after week, and month after month, at no expense to you.
So if we’re designing your B2B marketing strategy, the very first thing we’re writing down is SEO.
You need to find high-traffic keywords, place them on your website, and optimize your website correctly to meet search engine best practices.
If you do this and generate more website exposure over time, you’ll find your business shooting up the search engines and getting free traffic and leads.
3. Google Ads
The second thing we’d prioritize in our B2B marketing strategy is Google Ads.
It’s for the exact same reason as SEO. Google Ads will help you capture people who are looking for you.
We think we speak for all B2B companies when we say there’s nothing like a hot lead, especially when you have an expensive product and a very long sales cycle.
So placing Google Ads on specific searches can be very beneficial for you.
But here’s the thing – Google Ads can be very expensive over time. You’re charged every time someone clicks on your ads and these clicks aren’t cheap.
We’ve seen clicks as low as a few dollars to as high as hundreds of dollars for a single click.
It varies based on your industry and how competitive you are.
Regardless, if you are savvy with Google Ads, you can often find low-hanging fruit by targeting very specific words that your competitors aren’t even thinking about.
This differs from SEO, whereas if you demonstrate to search engines that you’re website is the most relevant for a search result, you will earn free traffic.
Therefore, you’ll get a far higher return on your investment with SEO.
On the flip side, Google Ads start working immediately.
You could turn on a Google Ad in no time and start generating traffic. Whereas with SEO, it could take up to 1 year to start gaining momentum.
Regardless, both strategies are in our B2B marketing playbook to increase your leads.
4. Facebook Ads
Facebook ads, when done correctly, can be an excellent source of brand awareness, traffic, and leads.
Now, naturally, a lot of B2B businesses want nothing to do with Facebook. And are surprised that we recommend it.
Primarily because they think Facebook is not a business platform and that they will have a better chance at using something like LinkedIn.
And here’s why we disagree with this.
- Everyone is on Facebook.
It has 2 billion users.
So if you think C-Suite executives and business owners don’t use Facebook, then we’ve got news for you: you’re wrong. They use Facebook, arguably more than LinkedIn.
- Facebook ads are 10x cheaper than LinkedIn ads.
A single click on a LinkedIn ad might cost you $5.61, while the same click might cost you $0.51 on Facebook.
- Facebook ad targeting is unmatched to any social media platform.
Not only can you target using things like job title and industry, but you can also target based on behaviors, lookalike audiences, and remarketing audiences.
So this is why we’d prioritize Facebook ads as a B2B company.
In short, you need to put the right message in front of the right people in the right places.
No one is going to buy your $10,000 service after reading 3-short sentences in your Facebook ad.
You need to build value.
So instead of going straight for the kill, create that value consistently over time with a good offer to peak their interests, and further email follow-ups and retargeting.
5. LinkedIn Messenger Ads
Despite LinkedIn ads being terribly expensive, there are still several ways to use LinkedIn effectively for B2B marketing.
There’s InMail ads, sales navigator, and organic LinkedIn marketing strategies that work very well for businesses.
InMail Ads are sponsored messages that are sent directly to your target audience.
Because it appears directly in your audience’s mailbox, they are more likely to pay more attention to your content.
In fact, if we’re being honest, we’ve seen very little success at running lead gen ad campaigns for B2B clients on LinkedIn’s news feed.
Though, we have seen a whole lot of success at generating leads through InMail Ads.
LinkedIn sales navigator is like LinkedIn InMail ads, but on steroids.
It’s far more targeted and personalized than InMail ads, giving you a heightened chance of success.
For example, once you insert your targeting criteria, you can filter it by more advanced targeting options, like by the last time someone posted online, for example.
Now the con is that LinkedIn does cap the number of messages you can send with Navigator.
But here’s a little secret, there are 3rd party tools you can pair with sales navigator to send more messages and automate your lead generation process.
Look into a tool called LinkedHelper, which is known for being one of the most powerful LinkedIn automation tools on the 3rd party marketplace.
7. LinkedIn Organic Marketing
The good thing about LinkedIn is that its news feed is still in that “gold-rush” era where you can still get a lot of organic views and engagement for free.
We saw this with Facebook early on, when Facebook didn’t restrict business content as much and many businesses saw astonishing levels of engagement.
Now, even if you have 1 million followers on Facebook, chances are that you are only going to reach 1% of them organically when you post.
And that is if you’re lucky.
LinkedIn’s news feed is not as competitive yet. Therefore, you have more room to use it for free to grow your B2B marketing.
You should share frequently on the news feed, using both your personal and business accounts. And remember to post content that your ideal customers would find valuable.
You can also publish articles on LinkedIn. A lot of people use LinkedIn for news and research.
Posting meaningful content can help establish yourself as a thought-leader and contribute to building your B2B marketing brand.
8. Referral Websites
Where are people researching firms like yours?
For example, in the B2B space, there are sites like G2, Capterra, TrustPilot. And the list goes on and on.
Because B2B sales cycles are so long, people are going to do a whole lot of research before making a purchase.
What if you showed up where they were doing their research?
Think of all the major websites and blogs in your industry, and find out how you can make your business known on their websites.
There may even be advertising opportunities that help you gain visibility.
Middle of Funnel B2B Marketing
Alright, quick break here. Everything we’ve discussed so far will help you build your brand awareness, which is very important for your B2B marketing strategy.
But this is not going to drive sales alone. You’re going to have to do some work after your awareness is generated.
So here are our tips and tricks.
Alright guys, stay with us for a second.
Email is not sexy. We get it.
But the truth is that, it is still one of the most powerful ways to nurture your audience.
The single greatest difference between B2B marketing and B2C marketing is your sales cycle. B2B companies have very long sales cycles.
This means that even if you generate a lot of buzz, you’re still going to need to establish a relationship over time to nurture your leads with value until they convert.
And that’s why you need to use email marketing.
90% of people still check their email every day. And that is every reason why you need to take email marketing seriously in your B2B marketing.
You can continue to build your brand with email newsletters while baiting people to take action on buying your services.
If you’re sold on this, then this is what we recommend you to do.
Start sending email newsletters weekly if you can. We’re actually sending at least 8 email newsletters per month to our subscribers right now, so that’s about twice per week.
You can use a platform like Active Campaign, which is our favorite, or something like MailChimp.
But whatever you do, do something. As a B2B company, you can’t afford to not send emails to your leads.
10. Email Drips
What happens when someone contacts your business?
Do you contact them? How soon? And is this automatic or manual?
Regardless of your answers, email drips can make this easier for you.
Email drips are pre-made email sequences that are triggered based on events.
So you can have emails sent to people automatically on any interval you desire without lifting a finger.
As a B2B company, this can be very powerful for you. Especially if you carefully craft these email drips to fit the psychology of how people buy your products and services.
11. Retargeting
Just like email, retargeting ads help you stay in touch with your hottest leads.
For example, if someone is looking at the pricing page on your website, they’re probably a hot lead.
So what if the next time they got on Facebook, they saw an ad from you?
Or the next time they watched YouTube, they saw your ad before a video popped up?
Or, if when they’re reading an article online, they saw a banner ad from your business?
Retargeting ads have very high conversions in comparison to ads targeting people who are unaware of your business.
And that’s because you’re retargeting people who are aware of your business and therefore more likely to convert.
12. Push Notifications
Here’s a bonus: Have you ever seen those push notifications that pop-up on your desktop?
Well, this is another form of staying in front of your leads. When you’re a B2B marketer, you need to make as many touch points as you possibly can.
This will give you the highest chance of converting your leads into buying customers.
So the way push notifications work is that you’ll need to use an app like Aimtell and install it on your website.
Then it’ll capture the IP addresses of people who visit your website and you can create custom push alerts to go out to them.
Quick Recap
Alright, everyone, we’ve covered a lot for you to consider for your B2B marketing strategy.
To recap, here’s your B2B marketing playbook:
- Build your brand by adding value via YouTube, blogging, podcasting, or social media
- Use SEO to help people find your business for free
- Use Google ads to help people find your business for a fee
- Use Facebook ads to build your brand awareness and warm leads
- Use LinkedIn messenger ads to a broad audience directly
- Use LinkedIn sales navigator to do personalized outreach
- Use LinkedIn organic marketing to build your brand
- Use major industry websites to reach people looking for your business
- Use email newsletters to build your brand and nurture your leads
- Use email drips to nurture your leads without lifting a finger
- Use retargeting to stay in front of your audience everywhere online
- Use push notifications to reach your audience on their desktop or mobile device
We hope that the strategies and tips above will help you get closer to your goals for your B2B company.
But if you want more surefire results, don’t hesitate to contact us! Our amazing team can help create a customized digital marketing strategy that is fit for your business.
