Speak to a marketer working in the Business to Business (or B2B) sector and they’ll tell you that consumer marketers don’t know they’re born. Compared to getting messages to a consumer market, B2B specialists have a much tougher time finding the right messages and getting them to the right people.
There are some tips from the worlds of social media, consumer marketing and sales that can help the B2B marketer get their point across to their intended audience and improve the way in which they communicate businesses to generate sales. Taking note of these might help you re-invigorate your digital B2B marketing and inject some new life into your campaigns.
Don’t Be a Marketer; Be an Advocate
This may sound like a strange thing to say, but when a customer – either a public consumer or a business client – is looking for a product or service they don’t want to hear about how brilliant it is per se; they want to know how it will solve their problems.
Having an understanding of the things that cause businesses pain is a good start in finding how to get your product to be considered as a solution. Rather than harping on about how your product is the best thing since sliced bread, concentrate instead about how your product solves the problems your business market has better than that of your competitors.
Keep it Simple, But Don’t Talk Down
One of the worst things that could happen to you as a marketer is if your message goes over the head of the person you’re aiming it at. Not only does this mean missing out on a potential opportunity, it also risks setting a segment of your market against you for not communicating clearly.
That said, it’s also important to remember that stating your message simply and clearly doesn’t mean talking down to your audience. Choosing plain language rather than jargon, cutting out the extraneous words and concepts and focusing on the core message is vital.
Another way in which you can ensure you’re being received loud and clear is to check the understanding of your audience at every step of the way. Working with colleagues in sales to get them to ask buyers to explain the benefits of your products in their own words will give you a great indication of whether you’re bang on the money or far adrift with your messages.
Keep the Conversation Going
This is an extension of the above point about checking with your market whether your marketing message is being received in the way you would hope. These days, marketers have more ways than ever to engage in a dialogue with audiences through social and other digital media. Listening to the concerns that members of your potential market are raising in discussion forums and other social media and feeding those into your marketing development gives you an unrivalled opportunity to directly resolve the problems your prospective customers are having.
Conclusion
While marketing directly to businesses has a number of different elements to the ways in which consumer goods are promoted, there are things that each discipline can learn from the other in terms of offering an enticing prospect for the buyer.
Using digital media to send out a message and listen closely to what your customers have to say so you can better meet their needs is just one of the ways in which B2B marketing can ensure that the message their giving is targeted to make the maximum impact on their intended product users.