B2B Marketing – The Basics

When you put together your marketing plan, it’s usually easy to think of ways to reach your customers directly. After all, that’s what most businesses do on a day-to-day basis. However, depending on what service or product your company offers, there may be another huge target market out there—other businesses. So, what’s the key to B2B marketing? While there have been entire books and websites written on the subject that may be worth a read, we’ve put together a few tips to help you get started.

1. Expand your Catalog – While you may keep your catalog or service list simple for the consumers you serve directly, business customers may need something a bit more complex. Consider developing a separate catalog or website that highlights some of the additional solutions or products you offer. It can help you appear better suited for the B2B market. Seasonal Catalogs are another option to appeal to more customers, as your product may benefit from seasonal buying habits.
2. Nurture Leads through Content Marketing – Your B2B leads are busy people. While you want to create plenty of opportunities to connect on a personal basis, content marketing is also an imperative way to reach business owners. You can create useful content that allows you to build credibility in your industry and poise yourself as a leader. In this area, you want to reach out either quarterly or bi-monthly with quality, content-rich material that is both informative and original.
3. Build Authority – This ties into tip #2. Quality content is key to building authority. B2B customers are more likely to need “proof” of your authority. This means that on top of good content, a high-quality website, well-written about page and professional social media profiles are vital. The best thing is that anything you do to build authority and credibility in this way will only help your B2C marketing efforts as well.

At the end of the day, marketing to other businesses is not that much different than reaching out to customers directly. It’s all about presenting your firm in the best light possible. Spend some time thinking about new markets for your business and consider tweaking your current marketing plan a bit. You may be surprised by how much additional business is out there.